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First of all, let me apologize for any confusion caused by my Canadian English. "Exhibit" was meant to refer singular devices that comprise an "exhibition." But thanks for your input anyway everyone.

My prediction on "cool exhibits" was mostly correct although I wasn't predicting a particular subject area or interaction, like "particle physics" or "making an explosion" I was predicting something far less extraordinary: that a description of a favourite exhibit would come back with some kind of an emotional reaction.

There is a kind of visceral reaction we can have once we have an intellectual realization. Cognition and emotion are inextricably linked (go on, try to extric them!). A strong memory has an episodic component related to event context ("the most I ever threw up was at my birthday party") and a semantic component in that it is scaffolded into our cognitive architecture.

Thus everyone knows ice is cold but when people press their hands onto it within the context of the sinking of the Titanic, they get a memorable sense of how unpleasant it would be to bob in water containing icebergs. And probably everyone already knows they get a little squirrelly in a small space but being in a confinement exhibit would create a memorable bit of fear. And everyone knows the body is made of stringy muscles but when they realize they are looking at real dead people in a BodyWorlds exhibition, those weird-looking bits take on a whole new significance. Death, fear, food and sex are no-brainers for creating the glandular buzz that leads to cool-inducing context.

I have a picture of a kid around 9 or 10 holding a Burmese python that was about 12 feet long and probably weighed close to 200 pounds. The look on the kid's face is priceless: it's a mixture of fear and awe and triumph that it seems to be the reaction we always strive for. Sure we'll settle for "Huh. Isn't that interesting" but that doesn't make us happy as developers.

Someone brought up the spark chamber. We had one in the original iteration of a gallery on physics and it got cut out of phase 2 although our cloud chamber stayed in. I always thought the spark chamber was cool which put me a demographic of about 1 person in 50 who thinks that cosmic rays from outer space making their way to the scintillator is a cool thing. Sometimes with enough blahblahblah- I mean context-creating interpretation- you could interest 1 or 2 more out of 50 but it was not deemed cool enough to make the grade. Not a python and not a dead guy.

And there are lots of science museum exhibits like this: infra-red cameras that show your heat image, pulsing iron filings, detours detailing Darwin's chronology. These are intellectually-cool exhibits that context-primed science geeks like ourselves love but are hit-and-miss with the general public, especially kids.

Which leads me to a note-to-self for an exhibit I'm developing on alternative energy which a number of you have been kind enough to help me with. I want to create a python not a spark chamber so I need to put visitor experience AHEAD of science content as an outcome as I do my exhibit development. Maybe I won't focus on making tidal power cool, I'll figure out a way to make a giant fire vortex relevant.

Thanks for indulging this brain dump.

David Savory
Community Extensions Program Developer and Exhibit Curator
Science World British Columbia
TELUS World of Science
1455 Quebec Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Z7

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