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Chabot Space & Science Center to Debut Prototype Exhibits for Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Oakland, CA, September 1, 2001 — Chabot Space & Science Center enters into a unique partnership with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science this fall, with the debut of several prototype exhibits that focus on the wonders of space. After their debut at Chabot, the exhibits will be permanently installed next spring in the new Space Odyssey currently under construction at the Denver facility.

The hands-on exhibits, measuring from 5 feet to 20 feet in height, will be on rotating display in the lobby of Chabot's Tien MegaDome Theater through the end of October. The exhibits will demonstrate, among other phenomena, thermal imaging, Doppler effects, crater development, spectroscopy, gravitational forces, cloud chamber effects, stream table, and robotics. As prototypes, exhibit monitors will be evaluating visitors' interactions and responses for the Denver facility. 

The exhibits are being developed locally by Delphi Productions, Inc. and Gyroscope, Inc., museum design and fabrication firms hired by the Denver Museum to create an experience that will define the next generation of space science museum exhibits. The prototype exhibits have been divided into four interactive vignette blocks that will be tested by visitors to Chabot. Exhibits will be evaluated for general interest, technical feasibility, content comprehension, and visitor appeal. 

The first block of exhibits includes part of a Martian Outpost set in the late 21st century, where visitors can do experiments similar to those performed by future astronauts on the Martian surface. Other elements include "Astronauts' Time and Stress" testing and "Choose Your Crew," where visitors work as a team through psychological testing experiments.

The second exhibit block includes an interactive crater triptych, in which visitors create physical craters by launching ball bearings into a container of simulated Martian soil. They then analyze the results using stop action video, and study the dynamics through a computer-modeling program.

In the third block, visitors control a remote manipulator arm, similar to how astronauts use the Canadian Arm on the Space Shuttle. A Wind Interactive allows visitors to create Aeolian landscapes and dust devils similar to natural phenomena on Mars. The fourth block includes an exhibit called Gravity Spheres, which shows how planetary bodies tend to flatten as their rotational speed increases. 

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is undergoing renovations for new exhibits about space science, in response to great public interest in the worlds beyond our planet. Founded in 1900, the Museum has over 500,000 square feet of exhibition, educational and support space, and counts over 1.5 million visitors annually. The current renovation project includes Space Odyssey, an exciting new space sciences exhibition opening in mid-2003 that will highlight the sense of "being in space" for the visitor, for which these exhibits are being prototyped. 

Chabot Space & Science Center is the continuation and expansion of the public Chabot Observatory that has served Bay Area schools and citizens with astronomy and science education programs for 117 years. The new Chabot Space & Science Center, which opened in August 2000, is an innovative teaching and learning center focusing on astronomy and the interrelationship of all the sciences. Its telescope and observatory complex, domed-screen Tien MegaDome Theater, Ask Jeeves Planetarium, exhibits and natural park setting are a place where students, teachers and the public can imagine, understand and learn to shape their future through science. For more information on exhibits and programs at Chabot Space & Science Center, call (510) 336-7300, or visit the website at www.chabotspace.org.

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