Daytona Beach - Museum of Arts and Sciences

The Charles and Linda Williams Children's Museum is the only hands-on science center between Jacksonville and Orlando. The 9,300 sq. ft. addition to the museum opened November 21, 2008. The Children’s Museum houses professionally designed interactive exhibits that demonstrate various principles of science.
The exhibits have been designed by Hands-On, Inc., an award-winning exhibition design firm with clients from major cities around the world. Primary funding for this project has been provided by Charles and Linda Williams, Volusia County Echo, and community sponsors.

Through a partnership with the Early Learning Coalition of Flagler and Volusia the museum was able to fulfill the growing need for an exhibit that focused on engaging our youngest visitors. The Early Learning Play Center, which opened in June 2009, has already been one of the most popular exhibits at MOAS.

The center provides a bright, colorful, safe place for children ages 6 to 36 months to learn through play with a family member or caregiver. Comprised of five stations the play area challenges infants and toddlers to engage in activities that develop motor skills, encourage early literacy, and build critical cognitive processes. Each center is accompanied by an adult-height text panel that gives adults cues on how to interact with children at each station and encourage new levels of exploration.

Sponsored by Thomas & Sena Zane

CSI will focus on careers in law enforcement and forensic investigation. As they learn about this exciting field, children will learn the basics of crime investigation. Four elements of scientific investigation will be highlighted in the exhibit: DNA analysis, witness investigation, fingerprint investigation, and fiber analysis.

Imagine seeing a note being played for as long as that note is held … this visual enhancement to music is now available at MOAS for children when they sit down and play the Bubble Keyboard in the children’s museum.

This new exhibit, designed and built locally by Oceanariums, LLC, will offer the museum’s youngest visitors the opportunity to strike a note on the keyboard and cause one of eight bubble tubes to light up and bubble. Each bubble tube has a corresponding note on the keyboard. When that note is struck, its bubble tube will bubble and light up, showing the engraved letter note of the key.

Sponsored by NASCAR & Daytona International Speedway

Get your engines running as you use step-by-step instructions to assemble your race car and test it at a build station. When you are satisfied with your motor, gears and wheels race your car on the large figure eight track against two other friends. Guests will discover how gears play a large role on how fast wheels turn. This is a never ending challenge to make the fastest car. Who will win pole position?

Sponsored by Mr. & Mrs. J. Hyatt Brown

This exhibit takes hands-on to a new height! Guests will not only learn but experience what a pulley is and the differences between a simple pulley system and a compound pulley system. You will experience more wheels in a pulley equals easier lifting (of yourself). There are great connections provided on how we use pulleys in every day life with tow trucks, elevators, fishing poles and more.

Sponsored by Charles A. and Barbara C. Coleman

Using real tools see what you can build at this exhibit using nuts, bolts, and various panels. Build whatever you dream!

Sponsored by Deborah Bornmann Allen and Barbara Condon Coleman

Helping you see the unseen, the Video Light Microscope will provide guests the opportunity to experiment with a real tool of science. Various objects under the microscope will be magnified and displayed in brilliant full-color on an LCD monitor.

Sponsored by Dr. & Mrs. Thurman Gillespy, Jr.

This station allows children to learn about the human body. After entering a life-like doctor’s waiting room, children can sign in at a typical doctor’s reception desk and enter a doctor’s office. They can weigh themselves, check their height, read an eye chart, learn about nutrition and look through a microscope at representative human cells. The exhibit contains professional models of the human skeleton and heart, among others.

Sponsored by The Guild of the Museum of Arts & Sciences

A blend of science and music the Laser Harp is strung with laser beams instead of strings. Sixteen lasers are connected to a computer and when your hand breaks a laser beam, the computer triggers a rich variety of tones. Guests will create their own musical compositions that are unique every time.

Sponsored by Junior League of Daytona Beach

Put air to work with this exhibit by dropping a large sphere in a cylinder compressing the air underneath it. This air is forced into a tube that holds a tennis ball. The compressed air pushes up on the tennis ball and launches it up to the ceiling. This exhibit can open the discussion of gas laws during museum science classes and uses of cylinders in our everyday lives.

Sponsored by Radiology Associates

Radiology Associates, a group of local doctors who specialize in such areas as digital catscans, ultrasound and magnetic resonance-imaging (MRI), has sponsored a child friendly radiology station consisting of eight separate hands-on exhibits. Children are able to enter a dark room lit with black lights where they can manipulate a skeleton, use ultrasound to find the coratid artery and examine X-rays to look at broken bones on a light box.

Sponsored by Mr. & Mrs. Bruce Rossmeyer

This exhibit area currently features a half scale Harley Davidson motorcycle which allows ‘riders’ to experience the open road through a flat screen monitor displaying scenes from across the country. Designer Tim Gabel created the motorcycle with many working elements including classic lights and sirens. In Summer of 2009 this exhibit area will be expanded with Fire and Police learning centers featuring real rescue equipment and imagination play elements.

Sponsored by Hall Construction Company, Inc.

Using arches, squares, rectangles and triangles guests are challenged to build the highest structures they can. This exhibit is challenging and only limited by your ideas and shaky hands. Don’t let it fall!

Sponsored by the Friedus Family

A small house has been created in “cut-away”, which allows children to examine the inner construction of a typical building. Wiring, sheetrock, framing, insulation, and duct work are exposed so that children can see how a building is put together. For example, they will be able to watch a time lapse video demonstrating the builders craft, interact with the display through the ringing of a doorbell, and fitting small PVC pipes together.

Get all geared up to turn a crank and move large and small inter-meshed colorful gears. Made of durable foam and safe for the smallest of fingers, this exhibit allows our guests to experience the movement of gears in a cause and effect fashion. This also provides a connection with every day gears like clocks, bikes, engines and more.

This exhibit challenges you to make a rapidly rotating string appear to “freeze” in the light of a strobe light. Guests will manipulate the length and speed of the string while adjusting the speed of the flashing light to create this optical phenomenon. While attempting this feat, you are sure to see many different visual patterns.

Have fun with gravity as you create a pathway for a ball to fall from the top of the wall to the ground. Stack the track just right, using different pipes, elbows, and curves and watch this potential energy become wildly kinetic. Change the path and try something different each time.

This electrifying exhibit gives our guests the opportunity to create circuits using easy to follow templates. Multiple challenges to complete circuits using lights, resistors, fans and switches provide a never ending chance to experiment. This exhibit engages people of all ages and supports individual and group experiences.

Become a master of gravity and make your own roller coaster by assembling crazy curves and deep dips while trying to keep a ball on the track. The never ending possibilities are only limited by your imagination! At this exhibit you will learn what it takes to make a real roller coaster.

Photo courtesy of Gail Carson.

Our pepperoni is no phoney baloney! Well actually it is. This exhibit provides a space where our young guests can imagine they are operating a pizza restaurant. They can create soft sculptures of pizza using real pizza pans and peels, bake a pizza in a lighted brick “oven,” ring up the order on a cash register, and serve customers seated at café tables. This experience encourages creativity and cooperation while building essential math and life skills.

*These exhibits are still available for sponsorship.

Sponsored by Mrs. Diane Van Wert

Local artist and art teacher, Steve Hardock created a beautiful 5' by 22' mural for the Children's Museum classroom. Children can take hands-on fun to a new level in guided classes taught by the MOAS education team. This space can also be rented for children's birthday parties.

Museum of Arts and Sciences - Daytona Beach, Florida