Take Matter Into Your Own Hands

“Understanding matter is important because it is all around us.  It’s everything we touch and see.  It’s dog and cats, people and plants, and even stuff we can’t see, like the air we breathe,” explains Anna Grace, Explorit’s exhibit coordinator.   Explorit’s new exhibit, Take Matter Into Your Own Hands, opens June 5th and examines this broad topic.

“The activities in this exhibition examine some important and intriguing concepts we often encounter in the world around us,” Grace continues.  “For example, we have a couple of experiments that look at the density of liquids.  With the recent oil spill in the gulf we wanted to look at the nature of oil and water to try to understand more about what happens when they are mixed.”

Visitors will also have the opportunity to examine matter in its different phases, including some questionable ones.  When cornstarch and water combine they create a non-Newtonian fluid that exhibits some interesting properties. Touch it slowly and it feels like a liquid, but if you give it a hard poke it feels surprisingly solid.  Even more odd is its behavior when high frequency sine waves are vibrated through it.

Activities throughout the exhibit will allow visitors to explore some of the hidden processes that are constantly happening around us. Experiment with air’s density by flying a hot air balloon. Watch magnetic putty slowly crawl closer and closer to a magnet. Create electricity using you own sweat and perform experiments on different types of slime and goo.

From plasma to glaciers, molecules and goo; Explorit’s new exhibition will have you looking at the world in a whole new way. The exhibit runs through August 29, 2010 and is sponsored by Monsanto.