Hands-on Science
Although it’s affiliated with the famous Smithsonian Institution, The Works never calls itself a museum. The directors know that kids are all antsy fingers and restless feet, and they want to do something every moment.
That’s why The Works, in Newark, Ohio, is headquarters for hands-on fun.
Pop in any day and you may find a mother and daughter jogging along to Wii Fit. Nearby, a medical student-to-be slots the liver and pancreas into a life-size fiberglass body. In the lab, a young engineer is building a circuit to power plastic fan blades — and promptly sticks his finger into the whirling disk. No harm done, and he’s instantly back tinkering at his inventor’s workbench.
At the build-a-slot-car station, one NASCAR wannabe is so excited to grab auto parts and get building that his mother has to suspend him by the belt so he can reach just the right component. His older brother already has his car at the starting line to see how fast it will fly.
In new and inventive ways, this 1861 factory is nearly as busy now as when Reinhardt Scheidler built his steam engines here in the 1880s, garnering 65 patents in the process. The Works is on a five-acre campus, with a print shop, wood shop and sawmill beyond the main building.
The factory is next to the Ohio and Erie Canal, and inside The Works, children can move a model of a canal boat along a make-believe channel. Then press a button and get an oil well derrick churning — Licking County had thousands of wells drilled between 1886 and 1930.
Or, turn a big crank and set the giant model of Scheidler Machine Works Co. in motion, much as it would have been operated in 1908.
Popularity:This article has been viewed
554 times.