Honey, They Shrunk the Kids

When the California Museum of Science and Industry opened in Exposition Park in 1955, visitors flocked to see replicas of exotic technologies like computers and rockets. Now such technologies are old hat and the museum faces competition from “edutainment” exhibits at theme parks that use sophisticated virtual reality games and other multimedia techniques to teach, sort of, as well as entertain.

Fortunately, the museum is engaged in a major expansion that will turn it into the California Science Center, a next-generation museum with a revitalized public role. The first phase of the expansion, expected to open by year’s end, features interactive exhibits like “Body Works,” a 55-foot transparent human figure with illuminated organ systems, and “The Cell Tunnel,” a multimedia experience that “shrinks” visitors to microscopic size. The aim is to show that all life, from a single-celled bacterium to the 100-trillion-celled human being, has the same basic survival needs.

Now the museum is beginning a campaign to raise $70 million for its second phase, two more theme halls exploring the universe and the ecosystems of the Pacific Rim. The expansion will be supported partly by those who become charter members of the renewed museum.

At many science museums today, kids can be observed mashing buttons to see figures rotate and water whoosh, while apparently learning little. But the Science Center has been designed to make learning stick. “Strolling scientists” will help kids perform experiments wherein they can glimpse nature’s machinery, for instance, while new education techniques will be pioneered at its science-focused elementary school and teacher training center.

California has more preeminent scientists than any other region in the world, but their hair is graying and their successors too often are not being produced here. In 1993, for example, California ranked at or near the bottom on almost every indicator of science and math education.

The Science Center, created with the help of scientists, along with leaders of USC and the Los Angeles Unified School District, is just the kind of interdisciplinary effort needed to help bring back the rocketing interest in science that’s been one of California’s historical keys to excellence.