Creative Reuse Winter 2004

Discovery Science Center for Children

by Sarah Weimer

What do you get when you combine used museum displays with thousands of energetic children attending a county fair? An innovative, hands-on Discovery Science Center for children.

Early in 2003, the staff at the Lake County Fair decided that one of their buildings needed a new activity during the annual event, which takes place every year on Labor Day weekend. The interior of the building is about 3,000 square feet, and it is fairly secure. The staff decided it would be a good place for a hands-on activity center for children, where their parents could sit and rest and still keep an eye on the kids.

Fair Manager Richard Persons learned from a fair board member that Chuck Doty, a fair volunteer, had a contact that might be interested in such an activity. Doty is the executive director of the Business Outreach and Response Team, which helps businesses start up or add new business units. He also serves as the Zone Administrator for the California Integrated Waste Management Board’s Recycling Market Development Zone (RMDZ) program for the Lake, Sonoma, and Mendocino RMDZ. He was working with the local county office of education and one school district on a discovery science museum project, and they quickly decided that was a good fit for the space.

Doty formed a working group with representatives from the fair to brainstorm and develop ideas for hands-on science activities. The group included Persons, the Office of Education, the UC Davis Homestake Mine Program, and several other groups. Doty also made contact with several science and technology museums around Northern California, asking for input. Those contacts resulted in the donations of about half a dozen used but still serviceable displays that made up the core of the resulting Discovery Science Center.

The working group volunteers recruited additional volunteers who worked on the donated displays and developed other displays. About six people worked for a number of months planning the science center; another dozen staffed the center during the county fair.

The museums were originally contacted for advice on how to put together the science center, and they originally volunteered to provide the displays. In most cases, the displays were either out of date for the museum’s current focus, or they needed some repair. In at least one case, the volunteers picking up the displays convinced the museum staff to give the fair a display not originally scheduled for donation.

Three “volunteers” (Persons, the county economic development director, and the project coordinator for the county office of education) collected the donated displays in a large rental truck. Picking up the displays required a 12-hour trip touring interactive museums throughout the San Francisco bay area.

The reused displays consisted of:

1. Animal paw print display (Children used tools to make a paw print, and then identified the animal).
2. Oversized cardboard box (When children open gifts, they will often play with the box, not the gift. This display offered the science of discovering the box).
3. A mirror and image display (showed optical illusion).
4. Television monitor and camera.
5. Two Little Tikes/IBM computer stations.

One of the local displays was on compost, where children could put on latex gloves and dig through a vegetative compost pile, identifying bugs as they went. Another display was a Van de Graff, the static electricity generator widely used in high school science classrooms until the mid-1980s (it was donated by a science teacher and required some minor repair). A third display was an electromagnet building area, where donated copper wire was wrapped around donated nails and attached to a 9-volt battery to form an electromagnet. The children got to keep the wire and nail.

The displays that were the most popular with the children were: The animal “paw print,” the “oversized” cardboard box, and the Little Tikes/IBM computer stations.

Much of the advance publicity noted that interactive museums had donated the displays for reuse, though the labeling did not make this statement.

Some of the displays had outlived their life at the originating museum, and the museums were pleased to offer them for the fair’s use. The contacts at the museums have been kind enough to offer their expertise for future development, and Doty is confident that other outdated displays will be available. All of the reused displays have been retained for future use, and the volunteers will be seeking other displays.

The cost to create and build these displays certainly would be in the tens of thousands of dollars. The cost to the fair to rent an interactive science display would be approximately $12,000.

The fair offered Persons and Doty the opportunity to test the waters to see if the community would be interested in a children’s discovery museum. The response was outstanding. Over the course of four days, 7,806 children visited the science center at least once. Children and parents both enjoyed having a fun, free, learning experience where they could touch everything.

By obtaining the donated items with great volunteer help, the Lake County Fair provided a first-class children’s educational venue at a very low cost. Persons and Doty look forward to organizing an even bigger and better Science Fair for next year’s fair. In the meantime, they will continue with their efforts to develop a permanent Children’s Discovery Museum in the community.

Contact information:
Chuck Doty
RMDZ Zone Administrator Lake/Sonoma/Mendocino
(707) 262-1090 ext. 102
bort@pacific.net

Creative Reuse Home

Last updated: December 30, 2008