I was in Southern California in October for a wedding – something that seems to happen every six months or so – and took advantage of a friend of a friend who works at the California Science Center to get a bit of a tour. The California Science Center is in the process of remaking itself. It used to be the California Museum of Science and Industry and now it has a shiny big building with lots of windows.

There’s a big emphasis on things you can try out yourself, like a nifty display case that shows the different ways that seeds or other bits of biological material can disperse to islands. (It used ping pong balls and levers and stuff. Really pretty fun.) Even before you go inside, in the parking lot, you get some real hands-on experience of a simple machine, by lifting this real live truck:

Obviously, as a reasonably-informed adult, and one who successfully completed the unit on simple machines in third grade, I know that you get more out of a lever the farther you are from the fulcrum, but boy, it takes on new meaning when you use it to lift a truck. (Note the actual space between the tires and the pavement.)

The museum has a lovely trio of space ships:

From left to right, a whole swath of space history: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules. That Mercury capsule is the very one that Ham the chimpanzee rode in on January 31, 1961. The Apollo capsule flew in 1975, which was after the moon landings were done; its main claim to fame is that it docked with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. All three are on loan from the National Air and Space Museum. I wonder how many of these things the Smithsonian owns, and where they all live.

The Science Center has a huuuge exhibit on ecosystems (which is kind of tucked away and easy to miss – a shame, because it’s like 75% of the museum). I particularly enjoyed a room about polar research. It’s kept extra-chilly and there’s a wall of ice where you can feel how well different insulating materials work:

They have a mitt made of fur, one stuffed with down, and so on, so you can see which one feels warmest. I can’t remember anymore, but I had fun poking the wall of ice. In the neighboring desert room I was amused to see a display on Katy Hinman, a former bat researcher who I was distantly acquainted with in college.

One of the most striking things in the museum was in the L.A. section of the Ecosystems exhibit. An artist took glass plates, put stencils on them, and left them outside on roofs in Los Angeles for one month. Here’s what happened.

And that, my friends, is just how much particulate pollution falls out of the air in Los Angeles. Makes you never want to breathe there again, doesn’t it?

For all my Museum Tourist posts, click here.