Exhibit Exploration Assignment--Hannah

I wanted to focus my Exhibit Exploration on the various ways to engage guests with magnets at the museum. While I initially planned to look only at Magnetic Islands, it occurred to me this week that Ring Launch, Ferrofluid, and the magnetic blocks in the play area of the IWS tie in logically to this discussion. I am not including the magnetic tiles at the Light Fountain, to limit my exploration to one floor only. 

Most guests are familiar with magnets when they come to the museum. I think they are an effective exhibit choice from a constructivist perspective, since they are something nearly everyone can connect to a real-life experience, whether that is with a magnetic toy, refrigerator magnets, or something covered in science class at school. What MOXI offers is an opportunity to explore the core idea of magnetism in multiple contexts, and in ways likely unavailable at home. 

Magnetic Islands: Magnetic Islands offer several different options for engagement. I’ve observed guests of all ages be drawn to this exhibit. Often they will grab a few of the washers, note through tactile observation that the islands are magnetic, and move on. I find that guest engagement with Magnetic Islands is highly dependent on factors like exhibit presentation and Spark facilitation. The following are a few options for engagement with this exhibit, and some relevant scientific practices. 

I like to engage guests with a few quick facilitation options that might encourage them to explore further on their own. With younger guests, I like to show them how a washer will “dance” in my hand as I move it closer and further away from the magnet. It’s a great way to observe the effect of the magnetic pull both visually and through touch. Tossing washers at the magnets from a distance is another easy engagement option for slightly older kids. Another technique I like to use started as an accident, when the pins on my badge ended up sticking to the magnets. I was initially surprised by how frequently this surprises younger guests! I now understand it as them collecting more information about this exhibit: it’s not JUST the washers that stick to these magnets, other objects can as well. Sometimes this will prompt guests to try sticking other objects to the magnets on their own. With time, you could come up with several scientific questions here. (e.g. What do all objects that stick to the magnets have in common? Which objects do NOT stick to the magnets? Do all objects that stick to the magnets do so with the same amount of strength? etc.) 

In addition to these possible scientific questions, the Islands also pose opportunities for engineering, and several engineering practices come into play when building bridges with the magnets. A readily identifiable problem is that the bridges may sag or break in the middle. I’ve found that the easiest solution to this problem is making your bridge two or three washers wide. I can remember one eventful day when Amani and I were building multiple bridges between the dishes (rather than within one dish) with a group of guests. The issue of sagging/breaking is even more prevalent as the washers get further away from the magnets. Our solution was to work together, with one person holding one half of the bridge in place while the other person built out the other half. Wider bridges for stability were even more crucial at this distance! While bridges are a relatively easy structure to build with the washers, I have had far less luck building towers, or at least, towers that are neat, symmetrical, and stable. I think it is interesting to contrast the engineering potential of Magnetic Islands compared to, say, Keva Planks. They both present unique advantages and challenges for builders! 

As mentioned, it is difficult to stack the washers vertically at Magnetic Islands. I recently succeeded in stacking four washers on top of each other (my previous record was 3). I wanted to carry out an investigation to understand some of the conditions that made this possible. When I cleared off all washers from one of the magnets, I wasn’t even able to stack two washers end-to-end. They immediately fell flat against the magnet when I tried. When there were other washers stuck to the magnet, I was able to build my towers. I would have to conduct further (extensive) investigations to come to more specific conclusions, but I found that conditions were best when there were a few washers stuck on one half of the magnet (as opposed to having washers evenly on all sides of the magnet). 

In contrast, it was much easier to create a chain of washers hanging from the plate below the magnet than it was to stack them on top of the magnet. I had previously hypothesized that I would only be able to stack four of them this way as well, but I was able to stack eight! I also decided to investigate whether the arrangement of washers on the magnet would affect my ability to make this chain, the way it did when I stacked washers above the magnet. For this investigation, I removed all washers from the magnet, and slowly stuck them back on. In this case, it did not seem to have an effect on washer stacking ability. In retrospect, it is quite straightforward to construct an explanation for this difference. In the case of the upwards stack of washers, gravity and the magnetic force are both pulling the washers downward. In the downwards stack of washers, the magnetic force is pulling from above, while gravity is pulling the washers downward. I could imagine building this upward/downward washer stacking being a useful phenomenon for anchoring a physics problem set!

There are undoubtedly numerous other ways to engage guests with Magnetic Islands—it’s a deceptively simple exhibit with many possibilities—but these are some of the practices I have tried out in the past few weeks. I wanted to include a few shorter notes on other magnet-related activities on the floor. I like to point guests in the direction of these related exhibits when I notice they seem to be really fascinated by Magnetic Islands (and vice versa)! 

Ferrofluid and Ring Launch: I’m grouping these together because they are located right next to each other, and they share a few other features in common. These exhibits are two of very few at MOXI that have explanation plaques explaining how they work. They also have limited options for engagement, unlike Magnetic Islands, and their appeal is more rooted in the visual (and auditory, in the case of Ring Launch) experiences they offer that would be difficult to recreate at home. They present magnetism in a more unfamiliar context for guests—most people have seen magnets stick to metal, but have they seen magnets cause rings to fly into the air, or create weird spiky shapes in a liquid? I view both of these exhibits as a jumping-off point for asking more questions about what else magnets could do. 

IWS Magnetic Blocks: I normally wouldn’t have thought to include these in this discussion, but an experience I had with a guest last week convinced me otherwise. On a quiet day in the IWS, I spent about an hour with one family, and much of that time was spent building together. I noticed that the magnetic blocks in the IWS play area are very good at tangibly showing the way magnets attract or repel each other, depending on their orientation. This concept is the basis of Ring Launch, but unless you read the plaque, it’s hard to come to that conclusion experientially. In the case of Magnetic Islands, it can be hard to observe magnetic polarity, since the washers are round and the magnet is so strong that it will quickly flip the washers to the attractive side. With the magnetic blocks, they simply won’t stick together in some configurations. This surprised the young guest (age 5-6) I was with, and we were able to explore this problem and possible solutions: would it stick if you rotated the block? Would it stick if you flipped it around lengthwise? As I mentioned with Magnetic Islands, they present an engineering experience unique from plain wooden blocks. 

I appreciate that each of these exhibits offer a different approach to one unifying concept, and provide many opportunities to engage in scientific practices, especially asking questions/defining problems, and subsequently constructing explanations or solutions. Between these four exhibits, there are numerous opportunities to engage guests of all ages with the core idea of magnetism, both from a science and engineering perspective.