The Mind Museum Experience (Part 1)

This is a very, very delayed post and I am really sorry for the delay. 🙁 I had my somewhat faulty camera with me and I took a lot of photos but not unexpectedly, not every photo turned out well and I had to choose only between the decent ones, which are still quite a handful nonetheless. And of course, my obsessive-compulsive streak won’t let me just dump them here without any touch-up whatsoever to make them look their best. So, here they finally are. I hope you enjoy them! 🙂

Mae and I went there on November 30, all bright and early. I did a bit of research about The Mind Museum and saw in their website that there were time slots for museum viewing. Since we will be attending the Cafe Scientifique at 4:00 p.m. the 12:00-3:00 p.m. slot seemed just about perfect for maximizing our time, with a little allowance for a quick snack before the forum. We hazarded our timing a bit early in case we got stuck in traffic, and arrived roughly around 10:30 a.m. But to our delight, our complimentary passes turned out to be all-day passes so we proceeded to the museum in all excitement. 😀

Aedi (idea spelled backwards) the robot greets everyone at the entrance. 🙂

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That’s my friend Mae taking photos.

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Another display near the entrance.

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I played the El Nido Interactive Trivia Game. I got nearly every answer correct. Lucky guesses! 😛

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The Natural Calamities Catalogue. Very useful collection of all sorts of information about Philippine calamities, especially in the wake of Yolanda’s destruction. The data are organized into the categories on the bottom part of the screen.

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“The sky resembles a backlit canopy with holes punched in it..” The ceiling at the Planetarium. Really pretty I must say. Reminds of the lyrics from one of my favorite Incubus songs, Wish You Were Here. Took me several shots to get it right, all sharp and showing the tiny lights to best advantage.

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Space suit.

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Moon Buggy. This display is remote-controlled and I had a kick playing with it. 😀 Moves kinda slowly, but then again this is a Moon Buggy, not a Ferrari. Some kid couldn’t wait for his turn after me, and was practically shoving me out of the way. Lol.

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Sound Pods. From what I understood, the sounds come not from speakers but from the vibrations of the material inside. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong though. Honestly I couldn’t really make sense of what I was supposed to be hearing while cocooned inside one of these pods, but I gotta say that they’re really comfy. 😀

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Our lovely home planet. The display can actually be controlled and you can view other planets, moons, different satellite views of the Earth and such. Even the weather can be viewed real-time since they have live feed from the US.

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The Human Story. From “Lucy” to Homo Sapiens. The evolution of the human species is shown in several stages from the Hominid (Lucy) to the Modern Human (the crouching woman at the right). I read somewhere that real human hair was used for the wax figurines’ hair, donated by various people.

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A closer look at the Modern Human. Kinda tricky taking a decent photo of her due to the bright spotlight trained on her face. Very pretty girl. 😉

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The Life Display.

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Close up of the Mammoth.

And speaking of pre-historic creatures, up next is my favorite part of the exhibit: Stan the T-Rex! Well, his fossil more like. 😉 It is not quite as large as I thought, but still plenty fearsome had it been all fleshed-out and chasing after me. Haha.

And this is my foot beside Stan’s humongous footprint. 😀

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The Giant Rafflesia flower display.

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This is pretty cool. You can see and hear your heartbeat when you hold the bars of the machine.

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Cell parts and processes. This is studied during Biology but I have long since forgotten most of them, though the terms are still familiar. This would be really helpful in making kids understand the cell, especially with such a colorful and eye-pleasing display. 🙂

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This is me with the Van de Graaff generator sphere. Supposedly, my hair should stand up or at least fly away from my head. But as you can see, my newly-curled hair wouldn’t let something as trivial as electrostatic charge to mess it up, even with me shaking my head to loosen up my tresses. 😛

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Who likes chocolate? This huge bar is unfortunately not edible. 😛 It is part of the Atom Gallery. Beside it (though not completely captured) is the molecular makeup of chocolate.

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The Science-in-the-Park is right outside the building. Kids and kids-at-heart (like yours truly) would have a kick playing here. 😀 Right beside every ride/play area is a brief explanation relating it to science.

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If you stand in the middle of the Sound Dome, your shout would echo because of the strategically placed concave discs. The sound waves would be bounced around back and forth thus the echo. 🙂

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The Brachistochrone Slide utilizes the curve of fastest descent, the path that will carry you from the top of the slide to the bottom in the least amount of time. I didn’t get to try it though, since it was raining about to rain and the slide was already flecked with waterdrops and my jeans would be dirtied. 😛

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We are all familiar with the Möbius strip, yes?

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The Archimedes’ Screw (the big pink tube) is used to transfer water from a lower body of water to a higher plane. The yellow wheel on the left side activates the screw pump when rotated.

There are also some humongous animal heads in the park. There are viewers at the back of the heads and you can watch short clips about the respective animal you are viewing. Here are some of the them:

In between roaming the museum, we took a break to rest our feet and maybe have a drink or something to refresh us. I read about the Mind Cafe with the premises, but the only area we found where there was food was Kyle’s Lab. Or maybe that’s the Mind Cafe already?

My snack from Kyle’s Lab on the second floor of the museum. That’s the Strawberry Juice with Popping Spheres, which was a fun drink. Kids would get a kick out of the  spheres which contain more juice inside. 😉 I wasn’t able to finish the potato wedges, but they were okay. The small pieces were crispy but the larger ones were not as soft inside as I would have wanted.

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How can I not take the chance to camwhore take a selfie when there are so many mirrors around? Sure beats the ubiquitous bathroom mirror selfie anytime. 😛

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Mae buying Da Vinci souvenirs at the canopy. Stupid me, I totally forgot to be a set of souvenirs myself. 🙁

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One of the “quote boards” on display all throughout the canopy of The Mind Museum.

There was so much to see and learn inside The Mind Museum, and what I have posted here is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Mae and I really enjoyed our science museum experience. Thank you so much to The Mind Museum for the great experience! 🙂

It was the last day of the Da Vinci — The Genius exhibition at the museum and we were able to view his works as well, but that entails a separate post. Until then! 😉

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P.S. The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra did a surprise performance in The Mind Museum that day, but we were not able to catch their impromptu performance. Nonetheless, here’s the video of their performance:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xw6qGAGkb8]

P.P.S. And here’s their special Holiday exhibit: