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Making science cool
December 26, 2009 |16:27 | Gossips By : Team X
In matters involving math and the hard sciences, my wife and I are limited. But that doesn’t mean we’re disinterested or content to let our kids be blank slates.
What turned me off to these subjects was the seeming irrelevance of it all: Why would it be useful or important to know the difference between a line segment and a ray?
With me as their dad, Julia and Beck are probably doomed never to be Thomas Edison, but if I can get them even a little bit excited about the possibilities of math and science, I want to try. One place where the twin disciplines are not tedious is the MIT Museum.
Opened in 1971, the museum on Mass. Ave. showcases the applications - some are practical, some are not - of research, teaching, and scientific innovations pioneered at the school, everything from artificial intelligence to robots.
The last time we wandered in was a few days after the opening of “Luminous Windows 2010,’’ the museum’s second annual winter holography exhibition, which includes holograms from the museum’s impressive collection. (MIT has the largest and most comprehensive collection of holography in the world.)
I made a feeble attempt to explain how a hologram works - it has to do with scattered light and how your brain organizes it, I said - but my kids had just one thought as they fixed their wide, unblinking eyes on the famous Cartier “Hand in Jewels’’ hologram: cool.
Our favorite exhibit features the whimsical sculptures of Arthur Ganson, whose delicate contraptions are composed of wire, welded steel, concrete, and chicken bone. (In “Machine With Wishbone,’’ a real wishbone pulls the mechanism responsible for its movement.) Again, cool. If you haven’t checked it out, you should.
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