Knott’s Project Aims to Spark Science Interest : Inventing: Thomas Edison Workshop, a joint project between the park and Southern California Edison, emphasizes uses for electricity.

While most new attractions at theme parks are measured in the millions of dollars these days, the Thomas A. Edison Inventors Workshop unveiled Thursday at Knott’s Berry Farm is a bit of an oddity.

Built for $20,000--the cost of materials--by Southern California Edison volunteers and retirees, it is in a shack at Camp Snoopy that used to house a computer lab.

It’s a joint project between Knott’s and the utility, which hoped to create an attraction that would spark student interest in science.

The idea, Knott’s President Terry Van Gorder said, is to “sugarcoat the pill” by making learning fun.

The workshop is filled with machines that demonstrate uses for electricity. Children from two local elementary schools--one named after Edison--turned hand cranks to generate electricity that powered a toy train or lit up a model town.

The machines demonstrate the natural laws that Edison had to contend with a century ago when he invented the light bulb and gramophone.

An Edison look-alike and Snoopy opened the doors of the workshop after a ceremony attended by: Southern California Edison Chairman John Bryson; Edison’s great-granddaughter, Lizabeth Sloane Taraskewicz of Whitehouse Station, N.J., and Mexican First Lady Cecilia Occelli de Salinas, who was scouting ideas for a children’s museum in Mexico City.

The project got its start after a Knott’s official last year asked the utility if it would be interested in building an exhibit at the park. Edison sells about $3 million in electricity to Knott’s yearly.

Sixty Edison workers from the Westminster office, along with retirees, volunteered for the project.