Day 39 - Portland, Oregon

We had a great visit to OMSI, (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) which clearly has informative and easy to understand exhibits about science and industry.  It is dedicated to family orientation, but us “old timers” also learned a lot about the various subjects.

The visit was started with a movie at a first class IMAX Theater with the subject being the North Pole/Arctic area with emphasis on the Polar Bear and how it lived in the area in the past, and now with less ice.  The movie shots clearly show that some dedicated people were involved in collecting this footage of the Polar Bear and other animals living and roaming in the ice/snow/water environment in the Arctic.

IMAX Movie "To the Arctic"

Some of the main exhibits features:

1.     Body World, the brain, forming of children, etc.

Dick and Cloma learn
about animal thinking

2.     What animals think and their positive relationship with humans

3.     Natural disasters around the world

4.     A planetarium with laser show

5.     All types of educational exhibits demonstrating many of the things we learned in school such as “probability, electrical systems, various types of machines, including very high power diesel generators, and many other machines that are used in our everyday world. 

Probability relates to the life prediction and measured results for the life of a high power vacuum tube.  Some last a long time and some short, but most fall into the center of the probability curve demonstrated in the inserted picture.  In one actual case, some tubes lasted 50,000 hours and some failed early but most followed the center of the probability curve where the major number of tubes life fell into the 20,000 hour range.  So a 10,000 hour warranty was a practical marketing observation, even in early predictions.

A Clear Probability Exhibit 

Boys hair standing up at
static electric exhibit

All about Nano (small)

Cloma learns about Magnetism

Skeleton of Ancient Animal

Einstein and the Telegraph

I can think of many other practical industrial applications which clearly related to the great learning exhibits at OMSI!I consider the displays one of the best collections that I have seen during our travels.

6.     And last, a first class OMSI story for our girls.  Clearly, the visitors with school age children dominated the exhibits and in many cases were deeply involved in working of the many exhibits.  (Hence, the noise level was high).  In one case I saw a boy very interested in how a computer worked in a very excellent exhibit which demonstrated all the many sections of a modern computer and how they contributed to the clearly interesting working of a computer today. 

In another case, a boy was stacking various blocks to show how a carbon atom looked in its micro state.  (I thought the demonstrations were outstanding for those interested “kids” (older and young).

All about computers

Many of the exhibits clearly demonstrated how the various forces of nature work in such areas as centrifugal forces, etc., in very practical demonstrations.

The pictures included herein show a few of the outstanding practical exhibits.  Our group can relate to many of these practical exhibits as we review our education, working experience plus retirement.

Cloma and Tom Yingst Rig#22