Julian: Exhibits Exploration Assignment

I've been in an interesting scenario as of late. Having been promoted to the position of Weekend Supervisor, I am now exposed to a whole different side of the museum's operations. At the same time, my oppportunities for observing exhibits and guests have been restricted in comparison. However, I believe that I was able to observe a handful of exhibits for a sufficient period of time and use my own experiences at those exhibits to contextualize what I saw. While exciting, every time I see Sparks in the Innovation Workshop or discussing facilitation on the floor, I get a knot in my stomach and truly miss what I had previously been doing. At the very least however, I do know that I was recruited by Education to work Noon Years Eve in what promises to be a fantastic event for members, vistors, and staff. 

In the exhibit exploration assignment, I focused on five exhibits: Magnetic Islands, the Innovation Workshop, the Toddler Tuesday light mixing program, Mindball, and the Air Cannon. Unfortunately, many of my shifts were on weekend events, meaning that the time I did have to explore exhibits outside of my work responsibilities were on very light days. Thus, I'll have to lean heavily on reflections and hindsight of my work shifts to describe the explorations, and exclude some of the exhibits I had planned to explore. 

MAGNETIC ISLANDS 

At this exhibit, I had several opportunities to observe normal guests, field trip groups, staff members new to the museum, and even a directed group attending our Thanksgiving camp explore. I've noticed numerous questions, consistent behaviors, and more. Magnetic Islands is one of the exhibits where most, if not all, of the science praxes we look for can occur. 

Magnetic Islands provides observers a number of interesting phenomena, from the conversion of nonmagnetic washers into magnets within the field to unstable equilibria broken by a mere touch. In several cases, I had guests exclaim their findings out loud, making it clear that they were both observing the phenomenon and communicating to other people in their group. Furthermore, this was almost always followed by further exploration and even application (the construction of bridges, throwing washers from a distance, and so on). 

Since visitors were often engaged by the exhibit, I could increase the amount of time spent there by challenging the guests with a question. "How many washers can we hang from the bottom of the tray?", "How far away can you get before you don't feel like the washer isn't being pulled by the magnet at all?". These questions lead to experimentation often beyond what is immediately necessary: children that hang 8-9 washers from the bottom in at least one case concluded that they could probably build a bridge from one island to another. 

I had one particularly good interaction with Keyhan, the new guest services associate I provided the floor tour for as part of his training. He asked an abundance of questions and for each one I challenged him to find an answer himself. One of the first questions we tackled was 'are each of the 6 magnetic islands the same strength?'. We counted the number of magnets in each pile, tested the 'feel' of washers as we were pulling them away, and removed all the washers from one of the islands. I expected slightly different tests, but he came up with a practical theory (that the washers made the magnet stronger, an observation that I think is technically incorrect, but I am looking forward to conducting more examinations). 

LIGHT MIXING 

I thought I'd take the opportunity to observe something the instructors may have not seen before. The light mixing is a simple activity we included in December's Toddler Tuesday theme: Light. The format is simple. There are a number of cut out plastic or vinyl translucent shapes and a spray bottle on a table. Next to the table is a large window onto which several vinyl shapes were stuck to by the sparks. There are three phenomena that the toddlers and their guardians were able to observe. 

1. The production of fine spray or mist from the water spray bottles. 

2. The stickiness of the wet plastic/vinyl to smooth surfaces. 

3. The mixing of colors on the glass to produce new colors. 

Going in to the observation, I only expected the color mixing to capture the attention of toddlers and their guardians. As I quickly learned, the other two phenomena were much more interesting to them. Likewise, this was the only exploration where I didn't expect to field many questions and did expect to see more play, iteration, and experimentation. 

The challenge, of course, was that toddlers generally are not very verbal and necessarily communicate what they are thinking or why they are acting in a particular way. They did engage in some experimentation, as they played with the nozzles of the spray bottles until they had a satisfying misty cloud or until they got frustrated that they lost it. Some sprayed the glass and simply attached the tiles to it directly, while others used paint brushes to spread the water on the tiles and then transfer the wet tile to the glass. Some pushed out the visible water droplets and air bubbles out of the shapes on the glass (cleanup on these was particularly difficult as they were nearly impossible to peel off). 

Despite asking questions with the enthusiastic support of the parents, we were unable to get any of the toddlers to comment on changes in color or tone when the light tiles were stacked atop eachother, demonstrating light mixing. Nor did any toddler purposely stack the tiles on each other even after we showed them the phenomenon.

MINDBALL 

I wasn't expecting to do Mindball for this assignment, but during the whole-museum rentals, it ended up being the most popular exhibit and at times had crowds packed shoulder-to-shoulder to watch what happened. Mindball tends to produce questions but with only a little bit of pushing, guests often find ways to test their theories and improve their game. 

One of the most memorable experience was during a full museum rental for a holiday party. Many of the younger employees (early 20s, more or less) spent an extended amount of time exploring the second floor and mindball took the cake. Some were college graduates, and using the small amount of information I gave them (the machine collects electrical date from the surface of the head, particularly alpha waves) produced a number of questions and theories. 

Many loudly claimed the game was rigged, as it seemed like one side was winning. However, they devised a test (switching seats with the consistent winner) only to disprove their theory as despite switching seats, the person still one 5 out 6 games. Had I had more time with them, I would have liked to inquire whether they thought there might still be biases and ask what kinds of things help them relax or block out the distracting speech of the other player.

 

Conclusions 

This was an interesting assignment to undertake, especially with the challenges of my changing role at MOXI and the business of the holiday season. I have undoubtedly improved my facilitation using the model of the explorations we did with the mystery tubes, singing bowls, and beady bottles. Even if the questions I use are similar to the ones that I used weeks and months ago, I have learned to recognize the behaviors and science practices and gained a sense of when to and when not to interrupt them. Even with exhibits I had found challenging, like Mindball, there was a surprising amount of epxloration involved, especially with the added motivation of winning the game.