Countywide : Launch Pad Begins Countdown to Fun

For most young students, the word fun is not usually associated with learning such scientific principles as angular momentum and Bernoulli’s principle.

But for the 50 youngsters who visited a new hands-on science exhibit at Crystal Court in Costa Mesa on Tuesday, no other word would do. After all, their lessons involved playing with monster soap bubbles, fooling around with marbles and robots and fiddling with lasers.

Called Launch Pad, the 5,600-square-foot exhibit is designed to make learning exciting and playing educational. Excited fifth-graders from Vista Verde Elementary School in Irvine and Greenville Fundamental School in Santa Ana attended a 90-minute preview of the exhibit, which opens to the public June 20.

After spinning herself on a disk designed to demonstrate properties of angular momentum--the force that makes ice skaters spin faster as they pull their arms inward--Nanette Claytor, 11, of Irvine said the exhibit was an ideal way for students to learn.

“I like it all. It’s neat. It’s fun to play (while) you learn how things work,” she said. “You get to experience how it really is instead of reading about it.”

Her mother, Kimberli Claytor, 32, agreed. “It looks like they’re playing, but they’re going to come away with a good experience. They’re entranced.”

Other students watched a demonstration of Bernoulli’s principle, in which a ball suspended above a jet of air stayed within the jet stream, even when it appeared it should fall out. Named after the Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli, the principle deals with how pressure decreases in a fast-moving fluid such as air and explains why curve balls curve and airplanes fly.

The $500,000 exhibit was designed as a preview of the Discovery Science Center, to be built by mid-1996 in Santa Ana. When completed, the three-story, 88,000-square-foot center will include the county’s only IMAX theater and about 100 hands-on exhibits focusing on health, transportation, communication and environment.

Launch Pad resembles a cheery cross between Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory and Pee-wee’s Playhouse. A tall spark generator towers over exhibits alongside glass globes filled with flickering wisps of glowing plasma. Colored holograms of dinosaurs and dancers adorn one wall, and across the room is a laser that can conjure different patterns on the wall with the turn of a knob.

At times on Tuesday, learning science seemed more like an athletic event. Children raced from exhibit to exhibit, jostling for position and shouting to each other to try a new experiment. Boys and girls huddled around a plastic ball-pitching exhibit where participants’ throws were clocked by radar.

After a quick windup, Jordan Cumsky, 10, of Irvine unleashed a 62 m.p.h. throw. His friends cheered and then ushered him out of the way so they could try. “Maybe it’s learning, but you have a lot of fun and you get to do what’s happening,” Jordan said.

As he spoke, students nearby played with a 20-square-foot wall made of a single iridescent soap water bubble. With soapy hands, they poked the bubble and discovered that the bubble remained intact. Poking with a dry finger caused the wall to collapse.

Launch Pad director Chris Schuler held students spellbound during a demonstration with liquid nitrogen. He used the liquid, chilled to minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, to freeze a surgical glove and then crush it. Crunching like a dried leaf, the once-elastic glove fell in small pieces to the floor, prompting surprised exclamations from the students.

Situated on the third floor of Crystal Court, Launch Pad will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays; and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays.

Admission is $5, although parents accompanying a child get in free. For groups larger than 15 students, the cost is $3 per student. Admission will be free on opening day, June 20. The exhibit will be open for at least a year although it will close by the time the Science Center opens, officials said.

For more information, call (714) 540-2001.