Yesterday afternoon we went to the MIT Museum in Cambridge. My recent posts might convey that we’re cultured, consistent museum-going people, but really it’s only a winter thing. Any other time of year — or even this time of year, if it wasn’t so gray and 30 degree-ish — we’d opt for nature.
As Little Boy still professes to aspire to be a “robotic scientist” (a term he picked up from a friend at school, who has similar aspirations), this is a museum that gets him excited. Though he seems more interested in the end results of robotic science than the actual mechanics of robots, so I can’t say how deep this passion goes.
I secretly still think he’ll be some sort of artist, but maybe I never matured out of that “my kid’s doodles belong in a gallery” phase of parenthood.
Found buried at the bottom of Little Boy’s backpack
The MIT Museum features exhibits of technological and scientific artifacts that were produced by MIT faculty and students. Emphasis is on robots, machines, photography, holograms, and “gestural engineering,” a concept I won’t even try to explain but will just link to it and say it was cool.
Little Boy’s favorite exhibit was the Bubble Machine, which was a narrow tank of bubbles that slowly but continuously moved as the bubbles sagged and popped and more air was pumped into the tank. He watched it for about ten minutes. He was fascinated by the lines and the shapes that the bubbles made.
Bubble Machine
It reminded me when he was 2 years old, back in Ethiopia, when blowing bubbles and watching them float was all the rage among the kids in the transition home. When he was a Bubble Machine!
Little Boy, bubble machine!
