Discover pulley power with the six exhibits at the Pulley Wall that invite you to explore what a pulley is and how it behaves. We've taken an Etch A Sketch® apart to reveal its inner-workings. See how pulleys and wires guide the drawing tip.
Test out your manual dexterity by tracing patterns on the Pattern Tracer, a gigantic version of the classic Etch A Sketch® toy.
Create crazy optical illusions at the Big Pulley, Little Pulley exhibit by connecting pulleys using flexible belts. Movable pulleys allow for endless combinations and encourage discoveries about the relationship between pulley size and speed.
Cams
On the Cam Wall, rotating cams make a frog jump, an alligator bite, and a firefly flash. Look inside the classic Dr. Duck® pull-toy to see how a cam lets him walk the walk.
Linkages
Many toys include linkages that connect moving parts. Explore examples of these linkages on the Linkages Wall. Operate a Hungry Hippo® and a model of the inner workings of the charming Pudgy the Piglet® to see how connected levers can turn a simple motion into one that's more complex.
Circuits
The Circuit Wall exhibits keep you current with the basics of circuits, switches, and circuit boards. Challenge yourself to keep a circuit open as you move a ring along an angled rod. Find out why it takes a steady hand to win at the classic game Operation®.
This giant Circuit Challenge circuit board is alive with fans, lights, and funny sounds, and you can safely trace each circuit with your finger. Try making all the circuits active at once?
What's Inside?
Hokey Pokey Elmo® loses his red fur and his plastic skin in the What's Inside the Hokey Pokey? exhibit to reveal the source of his killer dance moves. Check out the motor, cam, circuit board, and switches that make Elmo dance.
You can see right through Mr. Machine®, a classic toy from the 60's made of clear plastic. The What's Inside the Marching Machine? exhibit includes video highlights some of the linkages and cams that make him move, and you can see the original 1960 Mr. Machine® commercial, too!
What makes a Jack-in-the-Box jump? Turn the crank on the What's Inside Jack-in-the-Box? exhibit while you watch his mechanism on a built-in video-cam. His worm gear and cam mechanism never looked so big!
Gears
You see gears in just about any machine with moving parts, including lots of popular toys! Gears are wheels with teeth. If two gears mesh, and you turn one, the other turns. But that's just the start of what a gear can do—find out more at the Gears Wall.
Giant movable gears on the big Gears at Play table can set all sorts of magical things in motion. Can you figure out how to use different sized gears to make the carousel steadily turn and to make the twirling ballerinas spin as fast as possible?
Big Gear, Little Gear includes safely enclosed industrial-sized gears. Crank them up and see how each set of gears in a gear train changes the speed at which their shafts rotate.
Photos courtesy of Sciencenter, Gary Hodges
Montshire Museum of Science, One Montshire Road, Norwich, VT 05055 USA
Voice 802-649-2200 | Fax 802-649-3637 | E-mail montshire@montshire.org
Discover pulley power with the six exhibits at the Pulley Wall that invite you to explore what a pulley is and how it behaves. We've taken an Etch A Sketch® apart to reveal its inner-workings. See how pulleys and wires guide the drawing tip.
You see gears in just about any machine with moving parts, including lots of popular toys! Gears are wheels with teeth. If two gears mesh, and you turn one, the other turns. But that's just the start of what a gear can do—find out more at the Gears Wall.