Photo Friday: Let the Kids Play

And by kids, I mean the muscle man and myself! We had free tickets to go to the edutainment (haha spell check says that's even a real word, awesome!) kid's museum here in Birmingham, so even though we're full grown we still wanted to head over and have some fun!

click to visit McWane!

We've been to McWane several times before (I've even spent the night in the executive board room twice lol! wait, that sounds wrong... they have kid's slumber parties there, and often invite the 501st, and offer us the private meeting room upstairs to camp out in rather than downstairs with all the kids) In any case, it's so much fun, and they regularly change exhibits to make room for new stuff! The last time we went, they had just opened a 'touch tank' with sharks and sting rays in it, and the fish were a little less than used to their new habitat, so they didn't really come near people, so that was where we headed first thing this time around!

Omg sharks! haha I love how sharks feel, did you know early sandpaper was made from sharks skin? True Story! When they're alive they aren't very sand-paper-y, unless you run your hands up their back rather than down, but even then it's protected and kind of supple feeling... I've been to several touch tanks where they have rays, but not many have sharks, so this was quite a treat for me! 

 *dun uh, dun uh, dunuh, dunuh, dunuh dunuh dunuh dunuh* 

(that would be my typed interpretation of the jaws music... is is any wonder I wasn't allowed in band?)

,

 This kid was there with the rest of his family, and probably complained all morning about being dragged to the baby place, but he was having so much fun touching the rays and sharks as they swam by! Not that he'd ever admit to that, I'm sure...

Same goes for my muscle man haha... he got there dragged by his woman, but he really enjoyed the fishies! And the guide lady was super excited to see us and have an adult audience with no kids, and pulled out the shark jaw from behind the exhibit for us to see! Not the best picture of the muscle man (or the guide lady) but those shark teeth are cool!

Then it was back upstairs to some of the other exhibits... I point out the stairs part because I had most likely broken my toe 2 days before we went, so my foot was not happy to say the least... I still had a rocking good time, but I didn't take very many pictures because between having fun, worrying about my toe, and photography something just had to give... Plus I had forgotten my tripod, and there were loads of kids around following our every movement...

 This water fountain is super fun, it makes the ball appear to be floating haha... Plus, it's a fountain that you're supposed to play in, how can anyone resist that?

This little room off to the side really ought to have a massive sign that says "caution: every exhibit here can hurt you" Because they all look very pain-causing to me... First up is a fan that instead of blades has these paper discs (ok so paper won't exactly slice your hands off, but there's nothing separating you from the thing! and the 'off' switch is really hard to figure out!) But it is a really cool exhibit! Although the disc is spinning, if you adjust the light (a strobe light, umm that could also be dangerous if you're epileptic now that I think of it) it makes the disc appear to stop moving or move very slowly... Very cool visual effect =)

 And then right next to the exposed bladeless fan there's another similar exhibit that features a quickly vibrating/spinning string that you can use the strobe to see what looks like frequency modulation waves... Really cool!



It's even cooler that the controls are right underneath the spinning string of doom! So you practically get whacked by it when you try to adjust the strobe or the speed of the twisting of the string!

Of course if you don't get whacked unintentionally, you still wanna stick your hand in there and see just how fast that string is going... And let me tell you, it's quick! It stung my hand a bit, but then again the muscle man had it turned up all the way... Still, totally not toddler approved!


The other exhibits in the little room are all laser games, and they at least all have big labels on them telling you not to look at the laser beam =P And the laser game is actually really fun, you have to line up these little mirrors to bounce the beam off of to try to get it to hit a bullseye =) And another one where you can use camera like lenses to reflect and refract lasers into multiple beams. Really neat stuff!










Even with my bum foot, I had a fabulous time at McWane, despite all the kids running around and following us... I guess they saw us as 'cool big kids' since we're younger than their parents, and they wanted to try everything we tried! The muscle man was even playing with a model airplane and a kid came up and was huffing and puffing so he could have a turn =P