As we walked to the newest Pacific Science Center exhibit, Grossology, my 5-year-old daughter stuck her finger up a nostril and started a favorite ritual of any kid: digging for gold.
“Hey you should wait until we’re in the exhibit to do that,” I told her. “You’ll fit right in.”
Little did I know that she’d soon be able to walk step-by-step through her own experience.
“Grossology: The (Impolite) Science of The Human Body” is an exhibit that opened at Pacific Science Center earlier this summer and it’s a tour of what makes the human body work. That can sometimes — heck, often times — get kind of … well, gross.
The exhibit has 20 interactive displays and games that cover every inch of the body for kids to climb, explore and learn. It’s like going through an amusement park if that amusement park was inside your body. And if you think you’re not made up of some seriously icky stuff, you’re going to learn a lot throughout this exhibit.
Grossology is any boy’s dream come true. Smell farts and stinky feet over here, then shoot boogers into a giant pair of ceramic nostrils in this corner. Want to slide down an esophagus? Right this way. How about paying a visit to the vomit center? Thought you’d never ask.
On our recent visit, my 8-year-old son took to it right away, running over to the Y U Stink interactive display and squeezing the air ball that puffs noxious fumes up a cylinder directly into one’s nose. The game is to match the four body odors with the area of the body that they come from. (Piece of advice: be careful when you get to the lower intestines cylinder.)
It might have been more because of the giant animatronic statues than the overwhelming odors and sounds, but my daughter had to warm up to the exhibit. Once she did, though, she was climbing the skin wall and taking the Tour du Nose (this time with her feet not her fingers), which allows visitors to enter a giant cartoon nose and explore realistic nasal features like nose hair, the septum, mucus and more. There’s even a “sneeze” trigger that pushes air through the nose when visitors enter.
The Grossology exhibit is based on the book “Grossology” by Sylvia Branzei-Velasquez, who now lives in Washington. Branzei-Velasquez, who taught science to every grade from kindergarten through high school in Mendocino County, California, learned how to make class more fun by introducing her students to gross things like fake blood, snot and wounds.
The exhibit manages to do the same thing. During our visit, I heard a number of kids around me say, “I had no idea my body did that,” or “That’s where that goes.” Most young children are tactile learners, so when they smell something gross or touch something slimy they have an easier time relating to it.
As we left the exhibit and headed for the butterfly house, my daughter looked at me and said, “Now we’re headed to Cute-ology, right?”
Yes, I assured her.
Then, I looked at the boy and reminded him, “No shooting snot rockets at the butterflies.”
Aaron Swaney: 425-339-3430; aswaney@heraldnet.com. Follow him on Twitter: @swaney_aaron79.
If you go
“Grossology: The (Impolite) Science Of The Human Body” is open through Jan. 3 at Pacific Science Center. Based on Sylvia Branzei-Velasquez’s best-selling book “Grossology,” the exhibition uses sophisticated animatronics and imaginative exhibits to tell you the good, the bad and the downright ugly about runny noses, body odor and more. The exhibit is included with admission and is free for PSC members. For more information, go to www.pacificsciencecenter.org and to hear a podcast about the exhibit, visit soundcloud.com/pacsci/grossology-opens.
Gross!
Using easy-to-understand language and cause-and-effect games, Grossology makes it easy to learn about the things that are usually not fun to look at (or smell). Here were some of our favorites:
Skin Climbing Wall: Climb across a large-scale fiberglass replica of human skin features pimples, warts, wounds, hair, moles and other skin blemishes.
Burp Man: A large cartoon character drinks from a pop can pumped by visitors. The stomach pressure increases until the character releases a giant burp, while a second interactive exhibit shows how the sphincter works.
GI Slide: Young visitors slide and crawl through its giant 3-D model of the digestive system from mouth to large intestine.
Toot Toot: Visitors use rubber tubing and air to learn about the physics of tooting.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
