It’s only open for another week at Discovery Place Children’s Museum, but “Good Vibrations” is a good chance to learn of the many ways vibrations operate scientifically in our world.

In hands-on fashion and through successive stations, the exhibit teaches youth about such things as metal rings that resonate according to different sound frequencies, an oscylinder scope that shows the movement of musical strings creating a vibrating pattern, and a heat camera that shows your hot and cool points.

Sammy Wacasey, Texarkana Museums System archivist, pointed out some of the most unique stations.

At “Bicycle Wheel Gyro,” a youngster can sit down on a chair, turn a quickly spinning bicycle wheel with handles this way and that, and the wind force will turn the chair to the left or the right. It’s a lesson in how motion and wind combine to make movement.

“You pick it up when you’re sitting in a seat. You can turn this wheel and it will cause the air to make you spin around in a circle,” Wacasey said.

He demonstrated the “Speech Dissector,” which records your voice, cuts pieces of what you say and allows you to listen to the pieces. You can reverse the playback, thereby modifying that you say.

At “Turntable,” a disk rotates while different objects (balls, metal disks and rings) are set atop it. It gives a visual display of how those objects move on the rotating disk and how long they remain on it while the disk spins.

At “Visible Effects of the Invisible,” a glass tube is filled with clear fluid that bubbles and creates geysers when sounds go through the tube at different frequencies.

And at “Tornado,” the mist generator creates a wild (but very small) tornado that can be manipulated by changing the air currents feeding it.

All of the exhibit stations illustrate scientific principles through hands-on learning and visualizations of the different way vibrations work in our world.

“Good Vibrations” was developed and constructed for the Arkansas Discovery Network by San Francisco’s Exploratorium. And through ADN, it’s toured various destinations in Arkansas.



(The exhibit runs through Saturday, Jan. 10. TIckets: $4.50 for those 5 and up. Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. from Tuesday through Saturday. Info: 903-793-4831.)