Akron Life April 2023

EDUCATION

CENTER OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY, COLUMBUS

What to Expect: Lift a whole car using a lever and pulley system, make waves with a wave machine, manipulate an energy grid, see breathtaking views in the planetarium, check out dinosaur bones and make your hair stand straight up using an electrostatic generator. Find these hands-on exhibits, activities and play areas that teach kids about biology, energy, paleontology, space and more inside the 320,000-square-foot Center of Science and Industry. “It’s not just something where you sit and study. Everything you do at COSI is interactive and comes to life in front of you,” says director of communications Kristy Williams.

Why Go: With so many engaging activities, kids are in for a ton of fun, which blends perfectly with loads of education. “They’re learning valuable life lessons about pulley systems, about simple machines, about gears,” Williams says. “They’re learning STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — and they’re not even realizing it. They’re just having fun.” Williams brings her niece and nephew, who are 2 and 7, to COSI, and they especially enjoy the Little Kidspace, which includes a farm area, a water play area, a doctor area and more. Her niece drives the mini ambulance while her nephew pretends to be a doctor and interprets X-rays. “COSI provides the tools to give them those opportunities to let their imaginations run wild,” she says.

Don’t Miss: Kids love superheroes, so don’t miss “Nature’s Superheroes: Life at the Limits,” coming to COSI April 15 through Sept. 4. Meet organisms with extraordinary survival tactics, like live axolotls that can regenerate limbs and larger-than-life models of beetles that children can climb on to better understand the beetles’ pinchers. “It’s a really neat hands-on exhibit for kids and adults that showcases these different ways that animals thrive and survive in ways that you don’t see every day,” Williams says. 333 W. Broad St., Columbus, cosi.org

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APRIL 2023 | akronlife.com