Visit to California Science Center - Essay Example

Visit to California Science Center Since last few decades, field of science has developed and advanced extensively, and at the same time, it has continued to attract humans globally. During the last week of May 2012, I got an opportunity to visit California Science Center (2012) located in downtown Los Angeles that was an extraordinary representation of human achievements in the field of science. During the trip, I came to know that the center hosts a science fair on annual basis that I believe will be very informative as my visit was a very learning experience and it allowed me to discover new things about science.

Although visit to a science center sounded boring for some of our classmates, however, it turned out to be very exciting once we came across different exhibits that were placed in the center along with their description. There was a separate section for children below seven years that included special rooms allowing self-discovery by children in an imaginative manner. Besides, the center had separate sections for souvenir shops, books, and magazines on different science exhibits and inventions that were informative as well (California Science Center, 2012).

One of the impressive things about this science center was its free-of-cost entrance that encourages and motivates students to visit it repeatedly for acquiring information about different scientific achievements of the human society. I came across many exhibits; however, wind tunnel was one of the most impressive exhibits that attracted me extensively and I got interested in understanding its working and functions. As the picture indicates, the wind tunnel was itself a magnificent piece of scientific work that caught our eyes and we spent a lot of time experiencing its functioning and understanding scientific theories behind it.

The wind tunnel had two open ends and it worked like a telephone. When one of our classmates spoke from one end, we were able to hear his clear and loud voice at the other end that was entertaining yet inspiring. We came to know that sound is all about waves and the wind tunnel was constructed in a way to cater a clear path to compressions and decompressions of the sound waves, also known as rarefactions. Particularly, the wind tunnel was constructed especially according to longitudinal structure of sound waves that a person used to make from one end of the tunnel.

Forward and backward movement of air in the pipe was responsible to allow the sound waves to pass from one end of the wind tunnel to the other end (Abagnali, pp. 20-29). In this regard, the oscillation process has been one of the fundamentals behind the construction and functioning of the wind tunnel. Briefly, the wind tunnel was not something unexplainable and was actually a physical representation of how sound waves travel from one place to another. Besides wind tunnel, another exhibit that caught my attention was ‘Catch the Wind’ machine at the California Science Center (2012).

As the picture shows, the wind machine was a creatively built piece that allowed us to understand another scientific theory interactively. The machine allowed us to sail our boats while discovering and understanding Bernoulli principle (Miller & Vandome, pp. 23-39). In this interactive activity, we had to decide angles and positioning of our boats while looking at the wind blowing out from the machine that subsequently moved our boats from one side of the machine to another. As indicated earlier, the machine was built on the principle of Bernoulli that relates to fluid dynamics.

According to this principle, difference in the pressure affects the movement of fluid in any environment (Miller & Vandome, pp. 41-46). For instance, with reduction of pressure in water, there will be an inverse effect causing increase in speed of the water. The wind machine at the California Science Center was doing the same, as it was causing increase and decrease in pressure causing acceleration of speed and vice versa resulting in movement of our boats in different directions. Although this looked like a game only, however, it allowed us to learn about Bernoulli scientific principle in a very interactive manner, which could have been a boring process learning the same principle during a lecture in the classroom.

Conclusively, visit to the California Science Center was an extensive learning and entertaining experience, and I will be interested in visiting it again in the future that will help me in learning new things about the science and discovering new inventions and theories behind them. Works Cited Abagnali, Vitale. Sound Waves. Nova Science Publishing, 2011. California Science Center. Official Home Page of California Science Center, 2012. Retrieved on June 07, 2012: http://www.californiasciencecenter.

org/ Miller, Frederic P., Vandome, Agnes F. Bernoulli’s Principle. Alphascript Publishing, 2010.