Aidan Bond, 10, checks out a display case full of GPS tracking devices and gear.
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About GPS
Using satellites (in outer space) and receivers (down here on Earth), GPS technology allows people to pinpoint their precise location. Devices that are equipped with GPS equipment receive transmissions from satellites that orbit our planet twice a day, then turn those signals into positioning data. If you know the latitude and longitude coordinates of where you want to go, finding another location is merely a matter of pointing your GPS device in that general direction and following a series left and right turns until you get there.
Sounds intricate, but it turns out you needn’t be über-technology-savvy – or buy fancy equipment – to enjoy this fun and very popular pastime. There are more than 3 million “geocachers” around the world who spend their free time tracking down half a million treasures (which they call cache) across the planet using everything from GPS-enabled cell phones to more elaborate and larger systems.
Cache, you find out at this exhibit, is usually a small trinket found at a cache site along with a log that you sign to say you were there. You take the cache trinket you find and replace it with something else for the next geocacher to exchange. With so many cell phones now offering GPS, hunting for cache is an easy, surprise-filled and cheap way to spice up a family outing or vacation.
“Geocaching is becoming very popular in the Northwest,” says Jeremy Irish, president and CEO of Seattle-based Groundspeak, the exhibit sponsor and developer of Geocaching.com, the official global cache-hunting Web site.
Both schools and families are using the pastime to make learning fun and applicable for kids. “There are puzzles to solve, you learn about geography and use math to determine coordinates. It’s a great way to learn about your own back yard,” Irish says. Geocaching.com lists the coordinates for hundreds of thousands of cache sites around the globe.
“So many kids love video games,” says Stan Orchard, Pacific Science Center’s Web publisher, who avidly geocaches with his 3-year-old grandson. “This is sort of like a video game but you don’t sit around – you have to get out and move. Instead of moving stuff on a screen, you hold the device and move yourself.”
Join the Hunt at Pacific Science Center’s ‘GPS Adventures’
By Cheryl Murfin
Before checking out Pacific Science Center’s new “GPS Adventures” exhibit, I admit I was a tad ambivalent. I’m no techno-whiz, so the idea of hunting for treasure in a 2,500-square-foot maze surrounded by kids using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology sounded a little bit like torture to me.
But my 10-year-old son, Aidan, is a budding techno-whiz. Off we went to explore the world of geocaching, the technical term for the sport of treasure tracking with GPS.
After going through a brief orientation to learn how to use GPS, Aidan and I stepped into the maze. Graphics on the floor simulate a live GPS system and helped us to figure out the direction and distance we needed to move to reach each of four cache sites. Once we made it to a site, we put our heads together to solve the cache puzzle to decipher a secret code that allowed us to unlock a door and enter a satellite room. We stamped our Adventure Card with one of four mystery coordinates. When we had collected all four stamps we made our way to the World Map Station in front of the maze to plot the coordinates and find Treasure City.
All in all, “GPS Adventures” offers a great introduction to this globally popular sport, as well as the history of navigation. Hands-on interactive and educational displays, videos and touch panels show how GPS technology is helping to shape the world of navigation, mapping and orienteering today, and the exhibit gives you great insights into the art of finding and placing cache.
Aidan and I went online after visiting “GPS Adventures” and located several sites right in Ballard, where we live. After our first real cache find, he shouted, “Oh, wow! That’s really cool!” It was a win-win for both of us: He got to play with my GPS-enabled iPhone (generally verboten). And I got to watch my probably-too-sedentary son get a lot of exercise walking the streets in search of treasure.
Any reservations I had harbored vanished with the look on Aidan’s face – it was full of pride and excitement. I have to say I was glowing, too. I may not be a techno-whiz, but I even I figured out that this new technology makes treasure hunting accessible to everybody. And we have the cache to prove it!
IF YOU GO
Where: Pacific Science Center at Seattle Center When: March 28 to May 3, 2009 Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Cost: Adults $11, juniors 6 to 12 $8, kids 3 to 5 $6, and seniors 65 and over $9.50. Children under 3 are free, as are PSC members. Admission includes exhibits and a planetarium show. Learn more about Geocaching:www.geocaching.com and www.gpsmaze.com
Cheryl Murfin is a Seattle freelance writer and mother of two.
