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Expanded Science Center Enchants as it Educates
 | | Courtesy of Maryland Science Center | | The 'Dinosuar Mysteries' exhibit features real dinosaur bones and teeth. |
Stroll through a prehistoric wonderland where you gaze at gigantic dinosaurs, hear them roar, step into their oversized footprints. Enter a chamber that immerses you in the sounds, sights and vibrations of a beating heart. Watch the funnel cloud of a mini tornado spin, climb into a chimpanzee’s nest or lie on a bed of nails.
Science just got a whole lot more fun at the Maryland Science Center on the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. The center’s first major expansion since opening in 1976 - a $35 million, 40,000-square-foot addition - is a high-tech marvel filled with interactive exhibits that bring science to life in fascinating detail.
The project doubles exhibition space, and floor-to-ceiling windows flood much of the addition with natural light, giving it an airy feel and affording fantastic harbor views. With the expansion, the Science Center projects that annual attendance will grow from about 500,000 to 800,000.
“The expansion really is our effort to elevate the Maryland Science Center among science centers,” says Christopher S. Cropper, senior marketing director at the center. “This was an opportunity to completely transform the institution.”
Designers clearly put a lot of emphasis on hands-on experiences and story-telling techniques.
"We really feel we wanted to and have built a world-class museum and that our exhibits are groundbreaking," says Roberta Cooks, the senior exhibits director, who had worked at the renowned Franklin Institute in Philadelphia before coming to the Science Center. "Traditional science museums are interactive. But I think we really added to that the idea of strong story lines."
In the huge "Dinosaur Mysteries" exhibit, visitors can touch full-size replicas of dinosaurs, pick up and examine artifacts and clean and measure fossils. More than two dozen interactive activities simulate a dig site where you can unearth fossils, assemble dinosaur bones and skeletons and create unique prehistoric creatures.
“You actually get to act like a paleontologist, and we ask you at every part of the exhibit to try to figure out things for yourself,” Cooks says.
 | | Courtesy of Maryland Science Center | | Huge dinosaurs dominate the view from outside the Science Center. |
Dinosaur Mysteries features 13 full-scale dinosaurs made from fossils and casts of specimens. You get a good look at one of them – the 40-foot-long Tyrannosaurus Rex – before even entering the center. Suspended from the ceiling in the front window, its jaws opened, T. Rex looks like it’s about to attack pedestrians on the Inner Harbor promenade. T. Rex, the first model in the country to feature the lower rib cage, is even more impressive close-up.
The biggest of the prehistoric creatures – a 45-foot-long, 15-foot-tall rendition of a giganotosaurus, one of the largest known dinosaurs – is mounted on a platform so visitors can walk underneath to glimpse the feet and belly.
Nearby, visitors can follow the huge dinosaur tracks to a prehistoric attack. The Maryland state dinosaur, astrodon johnstoni, appears to be under attack by a smaller dinosaur. The 67-foot-long recreation of the two dinosaurs is based on fossil evidence found in Maryland and Texas.
“What’s really special about the exhibit is it’s very hands-on; you can touch and see many of the dinosaurs from different angles,” Cooks says. “You can probably get much closer than you can at any other dinosaur exhibit.”
Suspended above the dinosaur exhibit, a huge, translucent globe depicts layers of life and change on the planet.
The dinosaur exhibit also enchants visitors with a 100-million-year-old dinosaur egg; a prehistoric dinosaur skull you can touch; a rock wall embedded with dinosaur bones and teeth; and a re-creation of a dinosaur nest that children can sit inside.
 | | Courtesy of Maryland Science Center | | Children conduct experiments at the 'BodyLink' exhibit. |
The hands-on approach extends to other new Science Center exhibits.
In the 2,000-square-foot “Body Link” exhibit, visitors can venture into the Wet Lab, put on gloves, goggles and lab coats, then perform experiments that help answer vital questions: What is DNA? How do scientists identify and classify different bacteria? Are soaps the best substance to use to kill germs?
"Your Body: The Inside Story” takes you on a day-in-the-life journey through the human body. A remarkably realistic chamber that features vivid imagery, sounds and a floor that shakes beneath your feet simulates the pumping of the heart. Dreamlike sounds, dramatic images and scents fill a 30-foot-long tunnel that captures the experience of the senses as a person awakens.
In the 7,000-square-foot Your Body exhibit, you can also lie on the bed of bed of nails – thousands of them – and feel no pain because of even body distribution. Or squeeze objects through a tube to hear the squishing, gurgling and burping sounds of the human digestive system at work.
“Newton’s Alley” features all sorts of buttons, knobs and handles on devices that teach about matter, energy, forces and motion. Here, you can sit in a chair and use a pulley to hoist yourself to the stars. Convert your body’s energy into electricity, play tug-of-war against a team (and win). Or make music on a harp with beams of light instead of strings.
In the “Terra Link” exhibit, you can track hurricanes by using data downloaded to a huge glove, watch a mini tornado spin, zero in on your house (or anyplace else) using satellite imagery. The exhibit also provides earth science news like earthquakes and volcanos throughout the world in a high-tech, high-touch environment.
 | | Courtesy of Maryland Science Center | | Wearing prosthetic chimpanzee arms, kids 'knuckle-walk' in the exhibit ‘Discovering Chimpanzees: The Remarkable World of Jane Goodall.’ |
The first exhibit in the center’s new National Touring Exhibit Hall focuses on the lives of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. In the interactive exhibit,“Discovering Chimpanzees: The Remarkable World of Jane Goodall,” visitors can put on prosthetic chimp arms and try to “knuckle-walk,” climb into a chimp nest, record their own versions of chimp calls and learn about the animals’ body language and facial expressions. (The center’s IMAX Theater is showing a related movie, “Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees.”)
Even the center’s soaring three-story atrium imparts lessons of science. The Terrazzo floors, with mother-of-pearl inlay, depict the constellations of the night sky, and a stairway that shoots off into different directions appears to be floating.
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