Franklin Institute - Benjamin Franklin Statue
The Franklin Institute is Philadelphia’s innovative, hands-on, interactive museum devoted to exploring science in ranging form sports to space. For kids and adults, you will find that the interactive component of the museum makes the learning about science fun.
Highlights of the Franklin Institute includes The Sports Challenge, which uses virtual-reality technology to illustrate the physics of sports. My daughter loved everything from kicking a soccer ball, to climbing a rock wall to seeing how far and fast she could throw three types of balls. By far, the most interesting exhibit and our favorite was The Giant Heart. This is The Franklin Institute’s giant model walk-through Heart. My daughter’s reaction was “ew,” but boy were we couldn’t wait to walk through it when we saw it. The rest of the exhibit is pretty cool as well with numerous interactive devices areas.
A giant EKG (electrocardiogram) wave runs down the middle of the exhibit’s room. Exhibit components include a full size re-creation of a surgical theater, complete with actual open-heart surgery being performed via video effects, and a display of some of the latest technologies used in human heart treatment. A musical cartoon about blood transport and giant crawl-through arteries engages children.
But my daughter’s favorite, favorite activity was the SKY BIKE. Launched in 2000 as the only high wire bike on the East Coast, and only the second in the entire United States, the Sky Bike sits 28-feet high above the Bartol Atrium. As visitors peddle on a two-wheel bike, across a 60-foot wire, only one-inch in diameter, it would take over 113,800 lbs. of direct force applied to the cable to break it! With a 250-pound weight that hangs below the bike to prevent it from tipping over the Sky Bike is an interactive way for visitors to learn the law of “center of gravity” in dramatic fashion! It’s hard to believe my daughter is so fearless but she is, try it if you dare and are not afraid of heights because I am and just looking down from the balcony was scary.
Other museum highlights include The Train Factory’s climb-aboard steam engine; Space Command’s simulated earth-orbit research station; a fully equipped weather station, exhibits on electricity and so much more. And don’t miss the shows at the planetarium and IMAX theater.
The museum really does represent the cleverness of it’s namesake, Benjamin Franklin.
Location: Franklin Institute, 222 North 20th Street
Contact: (215) 448-1200 or www.fi.edu
