Pacific Science Center
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The Pacific Science Center is a science museum in Seattle, Washington.
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[edit] Organization
Pacific Science Center is an independent, non-profit science museum based in Seattle, Washington. It sits on 7.1 acres of land located on the south side of the Seattle Center. A satellite campus in Bellevue, Washington, the Mercer Slough Environmental Center, teaches children and adults about environmental stewardship, wetland ecology and nature awareness. Like many museums, Pacific Science Center creates, builds and rents many traveling exhibits. Pacific Science Center also has a fleet of vans that provide science education to schools all across the state. A division of staff workers show teachers in the state how to teach science.
[edit] History
Its original buildings were the United States Science Pavilion, part of the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle.
The fountains appeared in the movie It Happened at the World's Fair with Elvis Presley. After the fair ended, the museum was re-opened as the Pacific Science Center. The land and buildings were leased for $1.00 a year until 2004 when the title deed was signed over and Pacific Science Center Foundation officially took ownership.
Pacific Science Center is located within walking distance of the Space Needle, and is next to the Seattle Center. It is housed in what was the United States Science Pavilion for the Century 21 Exposition in 1962. The complex was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who also was the architect of the World Trade Center in New York. The walls of each building, composed of many pre-cast concrete slabs, form an arch motif used by Yamasaki in a number of buildings.
[edit] 1960s
In the 1960s, many exhibits were carried over from the original World's Fair exhibition, though only a few of these original exhibits remain, such as the Lens and Mirror machine and a suspended moon. Many current parents and engineers fondly remember their parents taking them there.[1] One of the most notable exhibits at the time was a ramp where the buildings were built at a tilt. This exhibit was reproduced in the late 1990s. The domed Spacerium, now used for laser shows, was designed for a wide-angle movie journey through space. Before IMAX, a previous movie theater there showed films like NASA's Apollo 8 (to the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine) and the 21st Century with Walter Cronkite. Future governor Dixy Lee Ray would head the Science Center for many years.
[edit] 1970s
In the mid 1970s, the lower-level math area was dominated by the IBM Mathematica exhibit where demonstrators in orange jackets ("OJ"s) made soap bubbles and showed audiences how the stylish new Chevrolet Chevette was paving the way for the quick adoption of the Metric system. Upstairs, a giant normal curve Pachinko machine would ring an alarm before emptying out its balls. An aerospace building contained a full-sized lunar module mockup from which suited astronauts would climb out. The Life building contained the Sea monster house, a Kwakiutl long house, and a working hydraulic model [1] of Puget Sound. With the physical sciences, the physics witch on Halloween would ask "Would you like to boil blood in a paper cup?" or Groucho Marx would dump liquid nitrogen on the ponds after a demo. The Eames theater was originally created for a special multi-screen IBM movie for the World Fair. It was later converted into an IMAX screen.
[edit] IMAX and past exhibits
Today the museum is composed of eight buildings, including two IMAX theaters (one of only a few places in the world with more than one IMAX theater), one of the world's largest Laser Dome theaters, a tropical butterfly house, a planetarium, and hundreds of hands-on science exhibits. In addition to the many permanent exhibits, Pacific Science Center has offered a constant rotation of traveling exhibits, including notable exhibits such as "China: 7,000 Years of Discovery", "Titanic: the Artifacts Exhibit", and "Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls".
[edit] References
- ^ 'Recalling the time of their lives", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 19, 2002
