Reflection on trip to science centre -Term 2

To all viewers, this post has to do with a visit I made to the Singapore Science Centre in May... enjoy.

I chose to visit the Science Centre on Labour Day as it was the only free day I had, and also; I could have more time to explore the interior.

When I got there, I decided to take my time with the exploration, as I realised there had been major renovating going on since by last trip, and the whole interior had been revamped. Also, there had been major changes to the layout of the exhibits, and though they still contained the same exhibits, they had been rearranged in such a way that the area now looked completely different from my previous visit.

I started with the ground floor, and visited the exhibit on bioethics. This exhibit is dedicated to environmental studies, such as pollution and destruction of habitats. Also, it displays information on weather conditions and natural disasters, and how they occur. Also, there was an area reserved for human anatomy, and another upstairs area for virology. The section on human anatomy was particularly interesting, as it talked about how people find each other physically attractive, and the psychological factors behind this. For example, I found out that when a person deemed physically attractive is shown alongside another, less attractive person, the former is also deemed to be physically unattractive.

The segment on virology was particularly disturbing, despite the weird and funny cartoon depictions of various viruses such as HIV, SARS, and Hepatitis B. This was most probably due to the fact that alongside the animated versions of the viruses, there were many samples of statistics displaying how the viruses are spread, and the symptoms. They were quite frightening, especially the physical symptoms of smallpox, which displayed many raised welts and pustules on an infant’s body and face.

Another sector of particular interest was the exhibit on sound. They had completely changed the various activities, and now the exhibit included a hollow tube that produced echoes when sound traveled through it (which I tried). I realised the echoes produced by the tube were exceedingly clear, and not like the echoes produced by sound bouncing off a natural wall.

Finally, the main atrium branching out to the other subsections of the Science Centre had one new exhibit, which was a tornado exhibit. Up until this time, I had only read about hurricanes and how they had a calm area in the centre, but I never expected to learn that the exact same occurrence was present in tornadoes – the centre of the storm is where the winds are calmest. I also tried a chamber they newly installed which was related to tornadoes – it simulated the wind conditions inside a hurricane. I almost died from the sound; it was exceedingly deafening.

Thus concluded my personal field trip to the Science Centre. It was short; albeit informative. I learned much from this visit, mainly because of the newly revamped exhibits, which made learning more comprehensive and enjoyable.

More stuff coming up soon... stay tuned.