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Couple of suggestions to share regarding the million to one query 
(sorry, I"m a few days behind...)

1.  We have a "How Many is a Million" exhibit that is part of our "Fun 
2,3,4: All about a Number of Things" exhibition.   It has seven sets of 
brightly painted gears (12" and 1.2") on each of seven axles, that mesh 
together at successive factors of ten.  Ten turns of the first axle 
causes the next gear to turn once, etc.  When the first gear/wooden 
wheel has turned 1,000,000 times then the last gear has gone around 
once, and a post on the last gear knocks a glass goblet off a pedestal 
(every 3 months or so depending upon your attendance). 

Visitors walk up and see the goblet and will say they'll turn it a 
million times.. and then as they crank and crank they realize that the 
hundreds gear is turning pretty slowly, and the others don't appear to 
be moving.  Adding the goblet doubled the number of turns.  Of course, 
the competition can get intense as you get close to breaking a goblet! 
 Putting a one-way roller bearing in the turning mechanism also 
increased the turns about 30%, as visitors can't turn the gears in the 
negative direction (which they did a lot even with arrows on the wooden 
turning wheel).  The gears are labelled tenths, ones, tens etc. with 
numbers 0 through 9 on them so you can actually read the number of 
turns, like an odometer.

That exhibit is one of our visitor's very favorite exhibits;  we're just 
finishing a copy to have on permanent display at our museum. 

You can see pictures at:

http://www.sciencenterexhibits.org

There are photos under the "Sales" section of our website.  (I'd be 
happy to send closeup photos etc.)
You can also see it in action in the Fun 234 Quicktime video under the 
"rental" section of the website.

2.  A great inexpensive addition to that exhibit is a "Becker Bottle" 
available from Flinn Scientific for about $40.  This gallon jar has a 
million little candies (cake decorating) in it.  One version has a 
million yellow candies and one black candy;  it is pretty easy to find 
the black candy.  The other version has 1 black candy, 10 green candies, 
100 pink etc. to a total of a million-- it takes several minutes to find 
the black one amongst the blue candies that are most of the bottle.  We 
put the candies in a clear 4" polycarbonate tube so visitors can spin 
and look for the one in a million!

Kathy Krafft
Exhibit Projects Director
Sciencenter
Ithaca, NY
607-272-0600 ext 25

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