Carnival and Maze Put Children in Touch With Science

Ten-year-old Rusty Barber of Sun Valley grinned triumphantly Thursday as he emerged from a 2,300-square-foot maze at a science carnival in Universal City, eager to tell his friends he had navigated the puzzle in just three minutes and 16 seconds.

He pronounced this a big improvement over his fifth-grade science class: “This is fun. It’s not like writing it down on a piece of paper.”

Rusty was one of 120 Los Angeles schoolchildren who helped kick off the Science Carnival & Maze, a three-month educational exhibit presented by Discovery Pavilion, a nonprofit organization that hopes to build a children’s science museum with hands-on displays in the San Fernando Valley.

Also on hand for the ribbon-cutting ceremony--actually, a string of rubber gloves was frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered--were dignitaries and celebrities including Jack Kemp, U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Don Herbert, television’s Mr. Wizard; City Atty. James K. Hahn and Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden.

“What you’ll find here is motivation, inspiration and fun,” said Woodland Hills attorney Nick Brestoff, president and founder of Discovery Pavilion. “Because science is fun.”

Brestoff, a longtime science buff, began searching four years ago for a place to put an interactive museum modeled after San Francisco’s Exploratorium. He said he is looking at sites in Chatsworth, North Hollywood, Universal City and the Sepulveda Basin.

In the meantime, he said, he hopes that the carnival and maze will help persuade the public of the value of such a museum and pave the way for a permanent site.

Once the site is chosen, he said, he believes he will be able to raise $10 million to $15 million to build the museum.

Discovery Pavilion already has raised $285,000 of the $500,000 the carnival will cost with help from a number of private and corporate donors, said Anne Hummel, executive director of the foundation. The goal for the carnival is to earn back its own costs, she said. Admission is $3 for children and $6 for adults, plus $1 for each trip through the maze.

Kemp, whose brother is chairman of the Discovery Pavilion board of overseers, praised the museum’s interactive approach as he tentatively stroked the back of a seven-foot-long boa constrictor. “I think the most exciting thing is the fun that the kids are having with science and math,” Kemp said.

Children yelled their discoveries to each other as they rushed through circus tents that contained many of the 45 “please touch me” exhibits designed to teach principles of physics, biology and optics. The children, from a Los Angeles Unified School District after-school program, clocked the speeds of thrown baseballs and footballs and turned up a gas flame to inflate a small hot-air balloon. They listened to their voices reverberate down a 75-foot-long echo tube and compared times through the maze.

Michael Lagoa, 11, of North Hills said he most enjoyed the boa constrictor. “On the bottom, it felt just like your stomach,” Michael said. “On the top, it felt rough.”

Rebecca Levin, 8, was also eager to describe her favorite part of the carnival. “I liked the one when you put balls through and pick them up and get them under,” she explained, bafflingly.

But she had to stop and think when asked what scientific principles she had learned.

“I don’t remember,” she said.