Boston = Science

It seems that every time, we visit Boston the kids' favorite thing to do is visit the Science Museum.  Before we headed in,  we warned the children that it would be a particularly short trip since we needed to leave before lunch

The first thing, they wanted to do was an old favorite, the forces room.  

 Froggy had tons of fun with centrifugal force.  She has played on this one before but this was the first time she actually got the idea and made it work right.  

 Our little friend S. (age 3) is finally old enough to explore on his own and not run amok.  He had fun trying out the balance.

 Next stop was fluid dynamics.  Everyone wanted to play with the water at first.

 But Froggy stayed long after everyone else lost interest.

 This neat table is supposed to help you test your peripheral vision but S. just wanted to make the lever arm swing.

 The best part in my opinion of the whole event was the anatomy room.  We got to see a real sheep's heart and lungs.  The docent even had a special tube that worked as though it were the trachea and put air in the lungs. 

Froggy was the only one of the children willing to touch it.  It was fascinating to feel the differences between the heart muscle which has to work and do a job and the gentle tissue of the lung which don't work.  It was also neat to feel the difference between the empty and full lungs.

Also in this room, we learned that Froggy can taste PTC as can S's mom but I cannot.  Whether or not you can taste it is genetically determined by two alleles in an almost completely Mediallian pattern.  Although PTC is not found in nature, the ability to taste it correlates strongly with the ability to taste other bitter substances that do occur naturally, many of which are toxins thus making one who can taste better equipped for survival.