Boom Time for Sci-Tech Centers

By David Bjerklie

The new palace of higher fun and learning in Columbus is in good company--lots of it. Almost 300 science centers in the U.S. welcome 115 million visitors a year--"a threefold increase in the past decade alone," says Bonnie VanDorn of the Association of Science-Technology Centers. What's more, 40% of them plan to open new facilities or expand existing ones in the next three years. Already completed is the California Science Center in Los Angeles, launched last year. Two other major overhauls open next month, in Kansas City, Mo., and St. Paul, Minn. Each cost more than $100 million.

These temples of scientific and technological enlightenment trace their roots to Munich's pioneering Deutsches Museum, created in 1903. Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and Philadelphia's Franklin Institute brought the movement to the U.S. in the 1930s. Science centers took a giant leap forward, says Franklin's Dennis Wint, in 1969 when man walked on the moon and the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto ushered in the hands-on era by inviting museumgoers to explore science by pulling ropes, cranking levers and sounding gongs.

Today sci-tech centers are pushing the envelope even further with what Wint calls "the creation of a life-enhancing experience." They're getting not only bigger and better but also more varied and engaging. In an increasingly complex scientific age, Wint says, "we help get the message out; that's our mission." And as the best of them show brilliantly, they not only appeal to our sense of play but also cultivate our natural curiosity and wonder.

--By David Bjerklie