Science Classroom in a Class by Itself
The recorded voice that fills the room seems inappropriately cheery, given the circumstances.
“We will now,” the voice intones calmly, “separate the rib cage to access the lungs.”
You attempt to remain as calm as the voice as you look on, even as your own, more wimpy, inner voice suggests: “Or, how ‘bout let’s not? . . .” Unfortunately, there is no Choice B on the table. The only thing on the table is the patient--shrouded in a ghostly white cloth, with nothing but his (or her--hard to tell in this outfit) vulnerable chest cavity exposed and pulsing in the dark.
You do not react, because you are mature adult, and, of course, one must separate the rib cage to access the lungs.
But you find yourself wishing that your age and supposed sophistication level did not preclude you from the same honest reactions exhibited by the fifth-graders from Vermont Elementary School, on this day visiting the Surgery Center exhibit during a pre-opening visit to the new California Science Center in Exposition Park--formerly the California Museum of Science and Industry. The center, which has undergone a $130-million face lift, including a new seven-story, 3D Imax Theater, opens to the public on Saturday.
“Eeeeeeewww!”
“That was nasty!”
“It’s making me sick!”
“This is disgusting!”
Don’t go away. A new surgery begins every four minutes.
The “surgery” is actually a video image projected on a small, square screen in the “patient’s” chest--a simple, yet striking special effect. But it’s real surgery, suture for suture. And, despite their squeals, many of the children returned to the operating room for another round--even though their homeroom teacher, Hendricus Struijk, had already fled for safer turf elsewhere in the center’s World of Life.
“I think I chose the right profession,” Struijk moaned.
Just because they were grossed out doesn’t mean they weren’t interested, they said when it was all over. Surprisingly, most of the young students’ fear and nervousness did not stem from the sight of blood. They imagined themselves as doctors, doing their best to save this video patient, whose lung was damaged by emphysema, but making some fatal mistake.
“It was actually, well, I felt like throwing up,” offered Jesus Rodriguez, 11. “But it was kind of exciting--I had never seen that. I hope to be a doctor; I know I’ve got to study a lot. It was exciting. But you are scared that you will do something wrong.”
Brenda Juarez, 10, agreed. “It’s kind of scary, because you could do something and the patient could die,” she said, wide-eyed. Brenda would like to be a dolphin trainer, but so far, unlike Jesus, she has a stomach of surgical steel: “It was gross, bloody, but I want to see it all, it was cool,” she said. “I could watch it even if I’m eating.”
Manny Gutierrez, 11, the critic who offered the quote “nasty” in his review of the Surgery Center, could not. “I would hate doing stuff to a person like that, I wouldn’t like to be a doctor,” he said. Manny wants to be a lawyer.
Except for Brenda, Friend of Flipper, many members of the class said they wanted to be doctors, or lawyers. But most agreed that an hour or so in the Science Center made them consider a wider range of career options.
Whether it’s a close encounter with a living virus, learning about how bats locate their prey (you could stick your head into a giant bat mask, which one student affectionately termed “the big rat”), or starting your journey at the Esophagus at the Digestion Diner (more on the sequential phases of this process than perhaps you wanted to know--with sound effects), there is more out there, and inside you, than you knew before.
It was a whirlwind tour. Following a screening of the 3D Imax movie “Into the Deep,” thekids were still waving their fingers in front of their eyes in the graceful style of the movie’s floating kelp and sea anemones as they walked by the Science Center’s aquarium of real jellyfish. Then they entered the Life Tunnel and the Cell Theater featuring big-name stars of biology such as bacteria, protists, fungi and virus cells, available for viewing under the microscope.
Although a few took quick peeks into the microscopes, most were in a rush to get on to the next exhibits--enticed by the instruction of a guide who admonished: “Play with everything.”
Along with the World of Life, the facility includes Creative World, all about technology, and will eventually include the World of the Pacific, a journey through the ecosystems of the Pacific Rim; and Worlds Beyond, exploring spacecraft and the rest of the universe, to be built as part of the center’s next two phases over 10 years. Creative World will be expanded as well.
Unfortunately, one of the center’s notable offerings was closed today: Tess, the 50-foot animatronic robot who teaches visitors about human physiology. But there was no lack of other things to play with--including all the plastic body parts necessary to build a giant bee, or a bright, lime-green katydid, or your own mad-scientist’s combination of both (it’s alive!).
And there was plenty of serious subject matter mixed in, particularly in the area of health. Next to a large, intimidating color enlargement photo of the HIV virus a computer screen offers information about AIDS. You have your choice of levels: kids, teens or adults--but no matter which button you push, you still find out this is a disease with no cure.
Another in-your-face exhibit was the Smoker’s Chair, made of transparent plastic and filled with hundreds of cigarette butts. The thing even smells like an ashtray when you sit in it, facing a video screen that tells you, among other scary things, that nicotine must be poison because it is used as a pesticide (of course, that might soon be a thing of the past, because after sitting in the Smoker’s Chair, even a Med fly wouldn’t smoke).
Alease Jordan, 11, got a lesson in childbirth when she visited a room devoted to the human fetus, with fetuses at various stages of development floating eerily behind glass. While this graphic exhibition has met with some strong reactions from adults, Alease found this display not disturbing, but intriguing, because her sister is having a baby. When? “I don’t know, but her stomach is real big,” said Alease, another future lawyer who nevertheless was more than willing to offer her medical opinion. “Any minute now!”
For a few students with enough nerve to volunteer, the tour ended with a ride on a high-wire bicycle, 48 feet above the floor, with only the laws of gravity to protect you from toppling over and falling into the net below. Nancy Hernandez, 11, did it--and lived. This daredevil even took her feet off the pedals, just to see what it would feel like.
“They give you two chances, and everybody is happy for you, and you feel good!” Nancy exclaimed afterward. “I raised my hand, and volunteered. Some of them [the other students] say, ‘I’m afraid, I got no heart.’ And I say, ‘I got double heart!’ ”
Sounds like a job for the Surgery Center.
A couple of days after the visit, teacher Struijk said the children’s experiences at the Science Center represented more than just a chance to play with some very cool high-tech toys. “The hands-on things were just great,” he said. “They were all impressed, even the students that are always the hardest to please on field trips. I think they really learned something.
“Everything in other places is, ‘Don’t touch this, don’t touch that, stay behind the lines’ . . . and by coincidence, almost everything that was there was the stuff that we are studying in school right now. It was great.
“As a teacher, and as a private citizen, I was impressed, and I learned a lot. I don’t think it’s just for kids.”
BE THERE
California Science Center, 700 State Drive, Exposition Park. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Free admission except to IMAX Theater, $3.75-$7.25. Parking $5. (213) 744-7400.
* THE 50-FOOT WOMAN: Tess, the California Science Center’s 50-foot-tall woman, represents a new science experience. Science File, B2.
