Kinetic Garden

Location: Entrance to Science Centre Typical time required: 30 - 60 minutes

Serving as a frontage to welcome you to the Science Centre experience, the Kinetic Garden is a unique outdoor exhibition which demonstrates certain scientific priciples and phenomena that would be difficult to create in an indoor setting. 

Come and discover the inter-relationships between the different forms of energy and much more through interactive and interesting exhibits like the Magic Swing, a Sundial and a Lithophone.

Highlights

Stoboscope & Fountain Grasp the edge of the disc firmly with your hand and spin it. Look through the edge of the spinning disc at the fountain; observe the water droplets carefully. Do the water droplets within the fountain jet appear to be suspended in mid-air?

Giant Chair Ask your friend to sit on the normal-size chair, and another friend to sit on the giant chair. Take a picture from the designated spot behind The Weather Station Panel exhibit.   If you look at a person sitting on a giant chair it is obvious that the chair is too big. However, if we place that in the same scene with another person sitting on a normal sized chair that looks identical but is much closer, our brains assume the chairs are the same size, so the first person must be tiny!

Sound Dish This is one of a pair of parabolic dishes some distance apart. Ask your friend to go to the other dish and speak to you from there. Stand close to this dish and find the point where you can hear your friend clearly. Try to switch roles and talk back to your friend from the same position where you could hear them.  Can they hear you too? What is the working principle behind this?

Magic Swing Sit on the swing and give yourself one big push to get started – then just sit and don't touch the floor again. The energy from the swing will be transferred to the pendulum at the side, which will start swinging, and the swing that you are sitting on may come to an almost complete stop. Stay seated for a bit longer and see what happens next! Will the energy transfer back from the pendulum to make you swing again? .

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