Trip to Science Centre

As well as a day trip to Falkland last week, we also went on another day trip. This one was in the opposite direction, to the Glasgow Science Centre.

It is quite expensive to get in for a family, as they don't offer family tickets, but there was plenty to see and everything is hands-on so it's good fun. Just now there is a special Wallace and Gromit exhibition on as well, with sets from the films as well as a big emphasis on inventions, so this was right up our James' street!

This big Lego model meets you at the door. That was Calum happy!

This is a life size model of the outside of Wallace's house, but you can't go inside though.

This special heat camera shows where your hottest and coldest body parts are. The boys are rubbing their hands together here to make them glow redder.

Calum's class have been learning about inventions that changed the world and this was one they studied.

Here is the model of Gromit's vegetable garden from Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Here he is in his little greenhouse, tending to his prize-winning marrow.

We took part in a challenge called the Diamond Heist Challenge. Your team had to use junk to build something to steal the diamond from it's display. You couldn't touch the ground around the diamond though, and had to get it without dropping it on the floor. (This probably makes a lot more sense if you have seen The Wrong Trousers! They weren't encouraging young criminals!)

This is our planning and building stage.

And here are Calum and James executing our plan. We stuck kitchen roll tubes together, made a scoop of plastic spoons on the end of it and put a big scrunch of sellotape on the spoons to stick to the diamond. We had another device of kitchen roll tubes with a cut out milk carton on the end, like a shovel, to catch the diamond in case the sellotape lost it's stickiness before we had the diamond safely across the floor.

It worked a treat, and we made it to second place on the leader board for fastest, successful attempts that week! 

Here are a few more film sets.

This exhibition was all about how packaging and branding has changed over the years.

James drew an invention and it got up onto Wallace's 'Bright Ideas Conveyor Belt'.

David as a builder operating a crane. His reflective jacket was a bit too much for the camera!

I didn't read what scientific fact this spinning disc taught them, but they had fun on it anyway.

This was a very clever bit in the optical illusions section. Carefully positioned mirrors make it look like the heads have no bodies.

Finally, here is the giant keyboard, and Alasdair making sweet music as he crawled along it.

Gaelic word of the day:

ceol (cyol) - music

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