I was provided the opportunity to visit the Arizona Science Center and Earth Explorers exhibit through a campaign with Blended Extended. All opinions are my own.
A couple weeks ago we got the awesome opportunity to take our boys to the Arizona Science Center‘s new Earth Explorers exhibit. We love going to the science center!! Everything is super hands on and tactile. I’m addicted to the weather stage.
Every few months the AZ Science Center brings in a new special exhibit. After our last trip to see the Lost Egypt exhibit, the boys have take to calling the center the “Mummy Museum.” It stuck with them. This new exhibit is really fun! It shows all the different parts of the Earth, the types of research people do, the tools they use, and facts about the region.
One of the AZ Science Center scientists was doing demos all over the center when we were there. He showed two different types of volcanoes, shield and composite, which give off different lava flows. The kids LOVED it! The first demo was all about the red food coloring and hands on ingredient mixing to create a slow lava flow.
The next eruption was from a composite volcano – as if the lava came up from under the ocean floor. The wax heats under the sand and the air bubbles find weak spots in the sand. When the wax (lava) is hot enough, it erupts through the sand and is instantly cooled by the water.
{The action is at 1 minute 50 seconds.}
The resulting formation was this cool almost reef like textured “land” from the “lava.”
Eddie got a little tired of waiting for the second eruption so he went and drove the Jeep with Dad.
We had to get a picture of the munchkins on the dog sled, which they thought was super cool. They’re seen one on Bubble Guppies and totally put two and two together.
The Arctic are was cool. There was a station that had three gloves of different thickness. You touch the cold “ice” with your bare hand and then graduate through each of the gloves to see how they protect your hands from the cold. The boys did this like three times each.
Oh the shark! So awesome. The boys were wearing of walking by it after watching Shark week last month, but they still thought is was cool. It even has a tracking devise on it’s dorsal fin.
There was a little submarine with a video of what marine life you see at different levels of the ocean. What kid doesn’t love to pretend they’re diving down after hitting a big red button?
Every little kids should get to be a scuba diver!
There was a rain forest area with fact about deadly animals.
The African grasslands had a hot air balloon you could ride (watching a video looking down at the animals), and pull the cord to activate the fake flame that made the video perspective go up too!
This was really cool. See that map, you move your hand around it, the senors recognize your hand movements, and then the video shows you the area where you looking with your hand. The point of view changes depending on how you move your hand. The stuff they can do these days. I’m tellin’ ya!
This is the pièce de résistance for me. This trough has a button you can push to turn the water on. it shows erosion and how land masses define the water flow. The really awesome thing? See those lights that are creating a topographical map? They adjust to what you do with the sand. Yeah. So the kids all made a dam for the water. So the lights change the sand to a different color depending on the elevation.
Change the sand, and you make a new map. How freaking cool is that?!?!?! I was playing with the sand as much as the kids!
And then there’s our favorite Weather Stage. Every 15 minutes the video goes off. You feel heat from the desert, lava and fire. Wind from a tornado and hurricane. Rain from the hurricane and monsoons. Even an earthquake! It’s way more fun in person!!
{screaming = rain}
We have the best time any trip we take to the AZ Science Center. We can’t wait to find out what the next exhibit will be in January 2015. You can stay up to date on the latest happening by following the center on Twitter @AZScienceCenter, on the AZ Science Center Facebook page, and on YouTube. Thank you so much to the team at Blended Extended for hooking up this awesome trip! If you’re a local AZ blogger, be sure to check out the site for more upcoming events!