So I Needed a Trip to the Museum to Tell Me That?

Well it has been a low energy week at the WTF household. I think it is a combination of post-holiday let down and the fact that Kiki & Snake have semester finals coming up. In addition it has been a pretty rainy week. So we have been keeping a low profile. Well today we could stand it no longer and gave the kids the choice of the Tate Britain Museum to see some art or the Science Museum. The kids chose the Science Museum. We took the bus down to the Museum. It is a pretty interesting ride, you ride by Harrods and the South Kensington area which is a pretty nice shopping area. (Note to me: I may take that bus again tomorrow and partake in some of the huge red sale signs I saw prominently displayed.)

All in all, I must say that the Science Museum is not really one that I would go out of the way to see again. We can certainly check it off our list and I doubt we would head back there. Most of the exhibits were displays where you just look at stuff. We have been to some great science museums where many of the displays have some kind of interactive component which makes it much more interesting for the kids and parents alike. There is a great science museum in Chicago and we really liked the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

They did have one exhibit that was interesting. It dealt with the power of the mind. There was an interesting part that talked about how the mind processes external stimuli and different brain waves. One of the few interactive displays dealt with the alpha brain waves that are produced by your brain when you are completely relaxed and not really thinking about much. This machine took those waves and converted them into energy which moved this ball in a box. Two people would put on these head bands that would measure your alpha waves. We watched several people "compete" against each other and see whose brain waves would move the ball further in the opposite direction. You "won" when you produced enough alpha brain waves to move the ball into your opponents area. Most of the competitions we watched were younger people, no older than 17, against older people in their 30's or 40's. Every time the younger person won. Kiki & Snake tried it against each other. Stalemate! For each inch Snake was able to move the ball, Kiki was able to move it back. It went on probably 3 times longer than any other match. It ended when we made them stop so someone else could have a turn. So what does it prove? That teenagers minds are not cluttered with enough complex thought to alter their alpha brain waves. Yeah right. Like I didn't know that already.