City: Des Moines, IA

Category: Tours & Attractions

Telephone: (515) 274-6868

Address: 401 West M. L. King Jr. Pkwy.

Description: Two floors of hands-on science activities for kids of all ages are found at this museum, located downtown just south of the Court Avenue Entertainment District. There’s an outer-space room with telescopes to look through and examine stars and planets, and a planetarium-style theater where you can choose the shows you want to watch from a long list of astronomy topics. In the adjoining hands-on room, kids can build a paper rocket and shoot it up to 40 feet using a compressed air gun, build a miniature dam to learn about hydroelectric power, and wrap a simulated egg in padding to see if it will survive a high fall from an elevator tower. There’s a natural-world room with displays of native Iowa plants and animals, including a replica bat cave and a tornado simulator that creates the swirling winds of a funnel cloud. Downstairs, another hands-on room has lots of levers to pull and buttons to push in demonstrations of properties of physics. An open area hosts scientific demonstrations throughout the day, while an IMAX theater, which has a separate admission charge, presents shows on undersea life and outer space, as well as feature films (several of the Harry Potter movies have played here). Outside the IMAX, a Foucault pendulum sways back and forth endlessly—stoop down and follow its path as it comes closer and closer to knocking over a pin in the ring that surrounds the pendulum. The museum occasionally hosts temporary exhibits examining great scientists or various scientific phenomena (these may shut down some of the permanent exhibits). Paid parking is available at meters on surrounding streets or in a city garage just north of the museum entrance on the east side of 4th Street.