Football
By the time January rolls around, the football season is just about over. However, it's just kicking off at the Children's Museum and Science Center (CMSC) at the Imperial Centre for the Arts and Sciences! Football: The Exhibit opens at the CMSC on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. Football: The Exhibit is packed full of hands on displays that explore the science, technology and history of the game! CMSC visitors will see first-hand how to hold up next to a lineman by measuring your strength with the "Grip Tester." Check out the Double Reaction Timer, where you'll see if you react faster by sight or sound. Think you're fast enough to out run the defense? Then bring your running shoes to the Sprint Track. Learn about important key concepts like collisions, peripheral vision, and balance.

The NEW Children's Museum
Beginning January 31, 2009, the youngest visitors to the Rocky Mount Children's Museum & Science Center will have their own exciting new experience! The NEW Children's Museum is designed to be the ideal place to expose children to an educationally exciting resource that strengthens their motor skills, vocabulary, memory, and creative thinking. The NEW Children's Museum includes 35 interactive learning stations designed to engage "budding scientists" ages 6 months to 6 years. From exciting activities like experimenting with music and sounds, opening doors to reveal hidden surprises, matching characters to their shadows and exploring their stimulating and colorful surroundings, the NEW Children's Museum is a child's - and parent's - dream come true!

Live Animal Gallery
The Children's Museum and Science Center was awarded $147,150 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to help design, fabricate and install the final three exhibit components to the museum's live animal gallery; "Elements of Life," "Diversity in the Carolinas," and "Save Our Planet." The inquiry-based exhibits in this gallery are designed to inform our visitors about the diversity of life on this planet and how their actions affect the world we share. As visitors tour the gallery, they will experience the variety of animal life found on earth - mammals, insects, fish, reptiles, birds, etc., and the array of habitats that support these life forces (i.e., wetlands, saltwater marshes, rainforests, etc.).

As visitors enter the new live animal gallery they will experience the "Elements of Life," the forces that make life on earth possible: water, air and solar energy. This exhibit area will tickle the senses as visitors see, hear and feel water flowing around them, wind blowing through their hair, and the warmth of the sun's rays on their skin. The entrance of the exhibit presents a holistic view of earth by immediately engaging the visitor's senses of sight, sound, and touch. This total sensory experience is designed to intrigue visitors of all ages.

Space Spot
The Space Spot is a great new addition to the CMSC permanent exhibit galleries. Space Spot is a sophisticated, hands-on interactive modular exhibit with numerous stations featuring information about astronomy and the space sciences. Space Spot was produced by Pacific Science Center for the Rocky Mount Children's Museum and Science Center and is suitable for all ages.

Spot Spot Interactives Include:

A Sunful of Jupiters
How do the sizes of the Earth, Sun, and Jupiter compare? See how many scale-sized "Jupiters" will fit inside a "sun" globe. Then see how many pea-sized "Earths" fit in a single "Jupiter" globe.

Star Colors
Why is the sun yellow, while other stars are blue or red or white? Stars' colors are a result of their temperatures. Compare the colors of three light bulbs--can you tell which is hottest? Then use a knob to match the bulbs' colors to a specific temperature.

3D Constellation
Constellations are giant pictures created by drawing lines between the night sky's stars. But because stars are not an equal distance away from the Earth, constellations don't look like they do from any other vantage point. Take a trip "around" the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), and see for yourself!

For more information about Space Spot or any other exhibit or program featured by the CMSC, call (252) 972-1167.