12/22/2009 - Air Fair: It'll Blow You Away!

Exhibit opens January 30 at Austin Children's Museum.

Austin, Texas (December 22, 2009) – You can’t see it. You can’t always feel it – but air is at work all around us. It can be as soothing as a summer’s breeze or as deadly as a tornado. On January 30, visitors to Austin Children’s Museum will also find that air is a lot of fun to investigate in the new feature exhibit, Air Fair!

Hover a ball, deliver a message across the Museum, make a real tornado and create music – all with the power of air! Children and adults will playfully discover the powers and properties of moving air by investigating over 15 hands-on components together. “We’re thrilled to present Air Fair to our community and provide opportunities that get kids excited about science,” said Mike Nellis, Executive Director at ACM.

Air Fair is designed to encourage children and adults to interact and experiment with different objects and explore how they affect air. “Visitors will become more aware of scientific concepts relating to air and the scientific processes of investigation and reasoning,” said Becky Jones, Director of Education at ACM.

Originally developed and featured by ACM in 2006, Air Fair is back for a limited time. Opening Saturday, January 30, the exhibit will run through May 22, 2010. Admission is $6.50 - $4.50 per person.

Air Fair Exhibit Components

• Vortex – See a twister that’s tame enough to touch. Learn how air pressure and wind create tornados.
• Bernoulli Blower – Discover how a stream of air can hold a ball in mid-air.
• Wind Tube – Explore the effect moving air has on objects that you design to spin, fly or float.
• Air Cannon – Discover the forces of air and how far it can travel. Get puffed with a blast of air!
• Tube Tunes – Use air to make music on this large instrument made of PVC pipe.
• Air Mail – Send and receive messages across the Museum using air, ping pong balls and a tube.
• Wind Chamber – Step into the chamber, select a super hero cape, scarf, wings or streamers and see how wind creates forces that you can catch and feel.
• Air Table – See how air can make things go! Experiment with the forces of air using pinwheels, flags and other items.
• Sailboats – Off to the races! Try different sails to see which boat will go the farthest.
• Kid-Powered Air – Pedal it, crank it. How many ways can you lift a ball in a stream of air?
• Pneumatic Launcher – What happens when you drop a big red bowling ball, down a large tube compressing the air in a connected tube? Add a tennis ball shooting 30 feet towards a gong and you have a game that’s “full of air” and fun!
• Which Way is Which? – Vibrating air makes sound that we hear. But what happens when you switch the direction you hear from? It’s a startling directional listening experience!

Air Fair was developed and produced by Austin Children's Museum with support from the Temple-Inland Foundation and the Theodore P. Davis Charitable Trust. This project was funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information visit austinkids.org or call 512-472-2499.

ABOUT ACM
The mission of the Austin Children's Museum is to create innovative learning experiences for children and families that equip and inspire the next generation of creative problem solvers. Located at the Dell Discovery Center downtown at the corner of 2nd Street and Colorado, the Austin Children's Museum is one of the city's popular cultural attractions with 200,000 visitors annually. Founded in 1983 as a non-profit organization, the Austin Children's Museum delivers its mission through a variety of exhibits, programs and outreach activities. For more information, please visit austinkids.org.
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