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Permanent Exhibits at the Discovery Museum
Upper Level
Discovery Museum Energy Exhibit
This visually exciting, interactive exhibit uses dioramas and videos to show where we get our electricity and how we can use it wisely.
This exciting new exhibit, sponsored by The CT Energy Efficiency Fund, Connecticut Light & Power, and United Illuminating Company, is a permanent addition to the museum’s upper-level galleries.
Discovery Museum Energy Exhibit
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203-372-3521
Sound and Light Galleries
Explore energy in the form of sound and light. Play a drum kit by remote control with optical sensors. See what lenses do to light. Mix colors and make shadows. Experience how different things sound without any echo in our anechoic chamber. Don’t forget to listen to Alexander Graham Bell telling about how he invented the first telephone, and try one of his experiments yourself.
Preschool Power
Preschool Power is a hands-on exhibit designed to engage, excite and educate children ages 0-3 years old. The exhibit features colorful, soft play structures carefully designed to teach age-appropriate motor skills such as balance and coordination, and engage the senses of sight, hearing and touch. The play structures encourage imagination, make-believe, and exploration. While parents and children play, they naturally experience colors and shapes and observe the physics of gravity. They also practice spatial perception, noticing what is bigger, what fits where, and which shapes roll better.
Separated by a partition from the rest of the exhibits, Preschool Power provides an environment where children three and under, and their parents, can explore and play in a space all their own. The exhibit space is enhanced with eco-friendly, child-safe rubber flooring. The environment is made safer by being a no-shoes zone, with cubbies and benches provided outside the exhibit.
Preschool Power was made possible by a grant from The Norma F. Pfriem Foundation.
Preschool Power
Separated by a partition from the rest of the exhibits, Preschool Power provides an environment where children three and under, and their parents, can explore and play in a space all their own. The exhibit space is enhanced with eco-friendly, child-safe rubber flooring. The environment is made safer by being a no-shoes zone, with cubbies and benches provided outside the exhibit.
Preschool Power was made possible by a grant from The Norma F. Pfriem Foundation.
Sports Science
Try shooting hoops with different shapes of backboard, and even a backboard that moves. Measure how high you can jump and how wide you can reach. Even compare the size of your hands and feet to those of NBA star Charles Smith.
Try shooting hoops with different shapes of backboard, and even a backboard that moves. Measure how high you can jump and how wide you can reach. Even compare the size of your hands and feet to those of NBA star Charles Smith.
Solar Legos™
Let your imagination run wild with Legos™. Solar panels provide the power to motors, then you add wheels, gears, or whatever you want to try. The racetrack lets you and a friend see who built the fastest car.
Mezzanine Art Gallery
This gallery showcases the work of local artists with several new exhibits per year. The Discovery Museum’s own history includes a rich tradition of exhibiting art, and in this space we keep the tradition alive while showcasing some of the best local talent.
Main Level
Visiting Exhibits
Lower Level
Space Galleries
Touch a real meteorite that fell to Earth about 50,000 years ago, drive a remote controlled rover across a simulated Martian landscape, test your knowledge of space exploration with video quizzes, see the latest from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in HDTV on our ViewSpace monitor, and send steel balls spiraling into our gravity well.
Visiting Exhibits
Lower Level
Touch a real meteorite that fell to Earth about 50,000 years ago, drive a remote controlled rover across a simulated Martian landscape, test your knowledge of space exploration with video quizzes, see the latest from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in HDTV on our ViewSpace monitor, and send steel balls spiraling into our gravity well.
Apollo 11 Spacesuit Photo Opportunity
Take your picture in the helmet of this full size replica of the spacesuit that the Apollo Astronauts wore. A recent addition, courtesy of Hamilton Sundstrand.
An accompanying kiosk shows “The Evolution of the Spacesuit”.
MoonBase Discovery
Climb in and around our Moonbase, sit in our lunar rover and drive it around a video moon, play at growing food in the hydroponic garden, sort soil samples, use a remote manipulator claw, or play videogames for preschool through the early grades.
Climb in and around our Moonbase, sit in our lunar rover and drive it around a video moon, play at growing food in the hydroponic garden, sort soil samples, use a remote manipulator claw, or play videogames for preschool through the early grades.
Mini-Exhibits:
Holograms and mirrors
round out the interactive offerings.
Films from the IMAX Space Collection
on constant display on one of our large screen displays.