Exhibits & ProgramsPortal To Current Research open daily inside Building 2.
Portal To Current Research
The Portal To Current Research space inside Building 2 showcases local scientists’ advances in current research through a combination of digital media, graphics, objects and interactive displays and programs. Content and themes change several times throughout the year. Very few opportunities exist for the public to learn about current scientific research and its impacts. This program is one more way Pacific Science Center is working to help people of all ages understand and appreciate some of the current research being done in our own region. Pacific Science Center’s monthly Meet A Scientist program, featuring local scientists who share their work with guests through hands-on activities and conversation, is included within the space when relevant.
Memory: Past Meets Present – September 17, 2016 – March 5, 2017.
Our brains are masters of mental mapping. Learn how we acquire, consolidate, and retrieve our memories. Explore a model of a human brain and discover how our understanding of the brain has evolved over time.
Then, focus on spatial memory—memories about where things are. Research has shown the brain has its own built-in GPS system, which helps us make mental maps of where we’ve been. In order to find our way, we need to know where we are, what we’re looking for, and where we’re going.
Scientists have learned our goals and motivations determine what we pay attention to along the way and ultimately what we remember. Make surprising discoveries about what gets included in your mental maps through a touch-table game about foraging for food in the forest. Challenge your memory skills by testing a technique used by ancient Greeks and Romans to memorize epic poems with the help of their spatial memory.
Current research from the University of Washington sheds light on how our brains record spatial information and also may help scientists develop a diagnostic tool to detect early warning signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
This exhibit series is funded by a grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
Previous Portal Exhibits
Chemists: Catalysts for Change – March 19, 2016 – September 5, 2016.
The raw materials that make up medicine, microchips, eyeglasses and even dog toys come from one source: oil. Find out more about these chemicals and chemistry in general at Chemists: Catalysts for Change, the new exhibit in the Portal to Current Research space.
Get to know some of the chemists from the University of Washington’s Center for Enabling New Technologies through Catalysis (CENTC). Learn about their efforts to make chemical reactions happen faster and their search for new sources of raw materials for everyday items. Roll up your sleeves, put on your gloves and build a compound. Explore some of the chemicals we use every day—did you know table salt is a chemical?—and see the catalysts inside your car.
This exhibit is made possible by grant number CHE-1205189 from the National Science Foundation.
Memory: Past Meets Present – September 19-March 6, 2016
How do your muscles learn to ride a bike, shoot a basketball or play the piano? In Memory: Past Meets Present, dive into procedural (a.k.a. muscle) memory and explore how practicing a specific action many times teaches your body to do physical tasks.
Train your own memory with a “save-the-prince” interactive game, and see if you can use your procedural memory to play a simple song on a keyboard. Meet UW graduate students working on a project called “vHAB” that could help patients relearn muscle memories after disease or injuries; then play a vHAB video game that uses sensitive motion-tracking technology to read your muscle movements and give you feedback on improvement.
Researchers estimate we each have about 86 billion neurons in our brains connected by 100,000 miles of axons—that’s equivalent to four trips around the Earth! While still don’t know exactly how our neurons talk to each other, scientists have made huge leaps in understanding how we acquire, consolidate and retrieve o