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Great Lakes exhibit customized, will have lots of interactive stuff geared to youngsters
By Elaine Guregian
Beacon Journal arts and culture writer
Published on Thursday, May 22, 2008
Einstein's theory of relativity began with his imagining what it would be like to ride a beam of light. Most of us will never be able to think like Einstein, but an exhibit opening Saturday at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland will give us a chance to play like him.
Einstein was jointly produced by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It began touring in November 2002 and has been on the road in the United States and internationally ever since. It will run in Cleveland through Labor Day weekend.
''You don't often get a chance to humanize science. The exhibition does really a good job of that. It gives you a chance to see science as a human endeavor,'' said Linda Abraham-Silver, executive director at Great Lakes. And having input from an East Coast museum, a West Coast cultural center and a Middle Eastern university gives the exhibit the benefit of multiple points of view on Einstein, who is famous beyond his work as a scientist.
The exhibit covers Einstein's general theory of relativity; his personal life and times; light, time, energy and gravity; and Einstein's work as a pacifist and global citizen.
Beyond that, workers at Great Lakes have customized the traveling exhibition with hands-on activities. At certain times during the day, to be announced each day at the visitor's center, education employees will go out into the museum, transporting activities on carts. Anyone can give them a try.
Dante Centuori, the museum's director of education and outreach and a physicist by training, takes us on a virtual tour to highlight some of the activities that Great Lakes employees will present.
Magnets
The magnet activities are geared toward the younger visitors. (The exhibit overall is suitable for children 7 and older.) That's appropriate, Centuori said, because Einstein loved playing with magnets as a child.
''For really young kids, it's magic that something levitates,'' he said. Stack ring magnets on a pedestal, and it will look as if they are floating. And try this: If you drop a magnet into a plastic pipe, it will fall through. But if you drop it through a copper pipe, it will take a long time to go through because of the interaction of the magnet and the electricity in the pipe.
Space-time table
The table represents in two dimensions Einstein's concept of gravity warping space-time in three dimensions.
Centuori said that if you replace a tabletop with Spandex fabric and then place a heavy weight on it, like a very dense steel ball bearing or a bowling ball, it will depress the fabric more than something like a marble. When the fabric is depressed by the heavier weight, a lighter weight, like a marble, will roll into the heavier weight, analogous to gravity attraction.
''That's what Einstein's general theory of relativity was, that gravity is what you get from masses warping space-time,'' Centuori said. ''The attraction of gravity is because the actual fabric of space and time has been warped. It sounds crazy, but that's what happens!''
Einstein's idea was seen as a crackpot theory of the time, Centuori said, but it was proved when people viewed a total solar eclipse and stars that were on the far side of the sun and should have been blocked by the sun were seen. This proved that the mass of the sun bent space-time so that the light from the star went around the sun.
''You couldn't find more spectacular proof of a radical theory than that. That made him an instant celebrity,'' Centuori said.
It's not easy to understand Einstein's theory of relativity because it's based on traveling at the speed of light, and everyday people can't relate to that, Centuori said.
''A plane is a good example. You don't realize how fast you're doing on a plane. That's relativity, too . . . It's hard for people to grasp that, so we have an analogy like the space-time table.''
Photoelectric effect
Although Einstein is most famous for his theory of relativity, he won the Nobel Prize for his theory of photoelectric effect, which led to the development of quantum physics, lasers and computer chips.
At the turn of the 20th century, scientists didn't completely understand light. Einstein built on the work of physicist Max Planck, who figured out that heat and light are emitted in discrete energy packets (called quanta). ''An electron gets excited by energy and emits light, only at certain times. It wasn't just a continuum,'' Centuori said.
To show what Einstein discovered, museum employees have devised an activity in which you shine a laser into a photo cell. It's like an early version of photo optics, Centuori said. You can send a message over the light beam. If you break the light beam, the transmission stops or is interrupted.
Cloud chamber
This might not be ready this weekend, but it will eventually be part of the exhibition's activities. A cloud chamber makes visible the radioactive particles that are always present around us. Don't go call the authorities; they're low-level and not dangerous, Centuori said. For example, your smoke detector works because it contains a piece of radioactive material.
Here's how it works: The cloud chamber (the size of a small fishbowl) is saturated with alcohol. When the alcohol condenses, a vapor cloud becomes visible. Then, when a charged particle goes through it, it will change the charges on the particle in the cloud chamber so they'll be attracted, and you'll see a little fuzzy trail.
''It'll come out of nowhere, very ephemeral, but you can see it. It's just a cool experience, because it's just a simple device. . . . You're shining a flashlight, so you can see it, then there are these things, just popping out of nowhere, streaking across,'' Centuori said.
Just one warning from him: ''You need to be a little patient for cosmic rays.''
Point well taken, but it'll be worth the wait.
Elaine Guregian can be reached at 330-996-3574 or eguregian@thebeaconjournal.com.
Einstein's theory of relativity began with his imagining what it would be like to ride a beam of light. Most of us will never be able to think like Einstein, but an exhibit opening Saturday at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland will give us a chance to play like him.
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