Fast Facts
Visitors can solve real-world engineering challenges with Design Zone, an exhibit that contains three interactive thematic areas and highlights the relationship between mathematical thinking and the creative process in art, music, and engineering.
$35,000 for 3 months, plus shipping
Light Show DJ
Balancing Art
Skate Park Design
Video Game Development
Math isn’t just a subject in school—it’s a fundamental, creative tool that artists and engineers use to design and invent! Visitors can solve real-world engineering challenges with Design Zone, an exhibit that contains three interactive thematic areas, highlighting the relationship between mathematical thinking and the creative process in art, music, and engineering. Each thematic area draws visitors into real-life scenes of music production, video game development, and extreme sports that directly and experientially relate mathematical concepts. Design Zone’s range of interactive experiences cater to a wide variety of visitors, with special emphasis on families and school groups, and visitors ages 10-14.
Virtual Tour
Marble Maze—Navigate mazes, avoid the black holes, and roll over stars to collect points. Visitors adjust variables and design a game that results in a high score.
Marble Maze—Navigate mazes, avoid the black holes, and roll over stars to collect points. Visitors adjust variables and design a game that results in a high score.
Drum Machine—Visitors pick sounds and number of repeats for a two-beat track, a three-beat track, and a four-beat track, and are challenged to get all three tracks to end on the same beat.
Whack-a-Phone—By whacking tubes of different lengths, visitors can make music! The length of the tube determines the pitch.
Whack-a-Phone interactive detail
Roller Coaster Hills—The first step in roller coaster design is to understand the relationship between hill height and distance traveled. Visitors experiment with ramps of different heights to design their own roller coaster.
Fast Tracks—This magnet wall lets visitors create and test roller coaster course designs.
Design a Skate Park - Skate parks can be modeled as a series of mathematical lines and curves. In this computer game, you manipulate the slope and length of ramps to create essential skate park features. Test your design with a virtual skater and ride the course!
Design a Skate Park decorative detail
Light Show DJ—Visitors step into the control booth at a virtual concert and put together laser light patterns to match the music to get the crowd dancing.
Balancing Art—Visitors discover the math behind mobiles by creating their own balancing art from colorful pieces.
Build a Tower—Visitors challenge their ability to continue a pattern in three dimensions by building a tower from custom printed architectural blocks.
Availability
- Spring 2021
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- Summer 2021
EcoTarium | Worcester, MA
- Fall 2021
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- Spring 2022
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School Resources
A collection of PDFs and guides for museum staff and teachers to expand on the educational content of the exhibit, including in-classroom experiments and activities for your museum floor.
Museum Resources
Media Resources
All the logos, images, and assets you need to properly market the exhibit, promote sponsors, and get guests excited about their visit!
Questions?
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Partners
Design Zone was produced and is toured by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. This exhibit was made possible by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant (award number 0714634).