Batts Go to Washington - Day 3

Today we visited the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space! It was especially fun since Hunter had just studied the moon landing a few weeks prior!

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Beautiful mural, right in the entrance to the museum



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Hubble space telescope (Hunter has also learned about and sketched this in his science lessons!)


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One of Hunter's favorite spots was the 'How Things Fly' exhibit. This room has all kinds of interactive displays!

Hunter's favorite activity in the room was this one, where he had to try and fly the plane straight, despite the fierce wind blowing at him!

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Another display from the 'How Things Fly' exhibit - kids can sit inside this cessna, and move al of the wings and flaps!

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Hunter was relieved to find out that this was not an astronaut mummy (curriculum crossover??)

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By the time we had seen about 2/3 of the first floor, we were running out of time on the parking meter. We left the museum with the intention of feeding more money into the meter, but we weren't allowed, as there is a strict two hour limit. By the time I had found another parking spot, we were too far away from air and space to go back, so we decided to call it a day and head home (had to get back to the hotel in Maryland before the INSANE DC afternoon traffic kicked up)

As we were getting ready to leave, we spotted a sign for an exhibit called 'Math Alive', at the International Gallery - what luck! We were standing right in front of it, and we had about an hour to spend.

This exhibit was awesome! It was all about applying math in exciting, useful ways, such as skateboarding, snowboarding, engineering, mountain climbing, music, creating video games, etc...

The first thing we checked out were the skateboards. After watching a short video about skateboards, Hunter used the computer to design his own. When he was satisfied with the design, the computer tested it to see if the skateboard would be capable of an ollie - it was!

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Rock climbing!

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This was a cool thing - Hunter stood in the center of this ring, with 20 cameras pointed at him from up above, and all the way around. After the picture was done, he walked over to a computer to check out his pose in 360 degrees!

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Here he is, checking out his picture

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One of the fun features of this exhibit was being able to email your 360 degree picture to yourself! Check it out:

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We are so glad that we stumbled upon the math exhibit unexpectedly! And nothing is lost, because we will just check out the rest of the air and space museum another day :o)