Day Trip to Tellus

Jason took today off (we didn't do a summer vacation this year and I've been begging him to take a day off) and we took a day trip to a Science Museum we have heard about. It was well worth the trip!This is a pendulum that always swings in the same direction and the floor shifts with the tilt of the earth.The first exhibit we went to was rocks and minerals. Tavis, who asks for rock books and rock collections for every holiday, was in awe. These pictures of him gazing in the displays doesn't even show his excitement. In the middle he is touching an actual meteor that hit our state!


They had a computer map of every earthquake actually happening on the earth in present time - which was crazy to watch. Here are the kids making an earthquake and watching their seismic graph.Daegan capturing everything on his camera - good boy!!!Daegan next to a piece of slate and Jason and I next to petrified wood, which was beautiful! Note all the different DO NOT TOUCH and PLEASE TOUCH signs!

Check out these pieces of Amethyst!

Then the kids got to go panning for gems, which was very exciting! (I'll let you guys guess who lost his bag - unfortunately, it was the rock lover)



The next exhibit was dinosaurs. As for the dinosaur theories, I could take it or leave it, but the boys loved it!

We all questioned, "Whose mouth is bigger?"They also had some fossilized dinosaur poop (in case you saw my facebook status today), Tavis touched it before realizing what it was then no one else wanted to touch it?And the kids got to dig for fossils, but also for dinosaur teeth and they got to keep one thing that they found!

The next exhibit was transportation and travel. They had some first cars and a replica of the first plane.


A display of different space rockets...
...a space capsule (they are so tiny!!!)...


...helicopters, jet engines....

...an airplane control panel example, and one to play with!

The last exhibit we went to was all hands-on and very cool. Capps loved building a maze for the ball to drop through.
They tried to make solar energy work for them, make a prism shine the right way, tried to figure out how to read an upside down sign through water, watched sounds waves rumble through sand and played with many different magnet exhibits.



We also went to a 45 minute planetarium show, which was one of many to choose from and it was very interesting. Still not sure how people saw such pictures from straight lines of a constellation?


Outside they had a rock garden with a much bigger display of numerous types of rocks.


And some big pieces of machinery.

When you have to buy tickets for seven people, it almost always makes sense to buy a membership. So, I'm looking forward to future visits and with our membership we have access to many other science museums that I'm already looking forward to visiting someday!