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A new frontier of fun: Museum of Science and History reopens Friday
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History - Events, Tips
Museum design plays well with others nearby
Three tech-heads lay the digital media on thick at the Museum of Science and History
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The new Fort Worth Museum of Science and History offers 166,000 square feet of interactive exhibits, historical artifacts and architectural beauty. On your first visit, the whole thing might be a bit overwhelming. To help you out, we’ve put together this list of 10 must-do activities.
Slide through 'Bumpasaurus,’ the 12-foot dinosaur slide.1 It’s modeled after a stegosaurus. It’s made of recycled car parts: old headlights for eyes, half a bumper car for a nose, license plates and 400 shiny moon hubcaps on its ample body. And it lights up and makes sounds as you slide through its mouth. It is awesome.Bumpasaurus will quickly become one of the must-visit destinations in the museum. Kids (sorry, adults) can climb up a ladder along the tail and shoot through the dinosaur’s mouth, bouncing out onto a cushioned section of the floor. And it is brilliantly placed in the middle of the museum’s gift shop.Oh, and a word about the gift shop: Shop Too! is 3,000 square feet of books, fossils, science kits and educational toys, plus jewelry, gifts and museum and Fort Worth mementos. Bring money.Walk through the dragon’s mouth.2 When the museum opened in 1945, it was known as the Fort Worth Children’s Museum — and by 1948, kids could enter the old building on Summit Avenue by walking through the mouth of a giant dragon’s head.Today, of course, the museum is bigger and focuses more on science and history. But a first-floor gallery for kids is now known as the Fort Worth Children’s Museum. And as a playful nod to its history, the museum has installed a dragon’s mouth — a hand-painted wood and steel structure — at the gallery’s entrance. The Children’s Museum is designed for kids 8 and younger. It’s full of stations that allow for learning through play: a miniature grocery store with tiny shopping carts, a doctor’s office with a kid-size ambulance, and a living science center that’ll offer a closer look at some animals — including the museum’s giant Galapagos tortoise.Gawk at the giant dinosaur skeleton.3 In the DinoLabs area, you won’t be able to miss the 60-foot-long, 12-foot-tall Paluxysaurus jonesi that fills up much of the room. Officially the state dinosaur of Texas, the Paluxysaurus jonesi was common in this region about 112 million years ago. And approximately 20 percent of this articulation is constructed from fossils discovered in 1982 at the Jones Ranch in Hood County near Glen Rose.Also in the DinoLabs area: an interactive imaging station that lets you reconstruct your own dinosaur, using what you’ve learned about size, skin texture, diet and environment. You can also see fossils of two other dinosaur species and compare bones from other animals — the femur of a dog, for example — to understand how big dinosaurs were.Drill for gas.4 The museum has devoted 10,000 square feet to its permanent Energy Blast exhibit, which teaches how energy is created, from gas to wind to solar. But natural gas is sort of a big thing around here, so a huge portion of this exhibit is used to explain the Barnett Shale.
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