G.Wiz - The Hands-On Science Museum
G.WIZ is an acronym for Gulf Coast Wonder and Imagination Zone, an appropriate name for discovery zone for all those who are kids at heart. It is located in the Bilvas Science and Technology Center right on Sarasota's bay front.
This museum is a popular venue for school trips as it plays host to some of the state's native animals, special exhibitions that explore the skies, ecology, new technology concepts and lots more for the curious mind.
The traveling exhibits featured at G.Wiz include "How People Make Things," modeled after the factory tour segment on children's TV series Mister Roger's Neighborhood. This is a one-of-a-kind exhibit as it enables visitors to get involved in interactive activities making use of actual factory machines and tools to create stuff. The manufacturing process in this exhibit includes molding, cutting, deforming and assembling.
This hands-on science center is two floors of exhibits on subjects encircling physical, health and earth scenes. Each of the 35 exhibits are based on themes based on music, mathematics, and motion, color and optics, illusion and sight, and lots more.
Among the featured permanent exhibits at the science museum are Habitat, Tech Zone, ExploraZone, Wave Zone, Body Zone, and Mindball.
ExploraZone consists of 38 separate exhibits that draws you in and helps you to uncover the mysteries behind gravity, perception and the force of motion. Here, you also get to build bridges and buildings with magnets, try your hand at making lightning with the Plasma ball, and bend voices with a speaking tube. You can also test the giant whisper dishes to listen in on a conversation across the room or use the Harmonograph to make a design in motion by using pendulum motion. The ExploraZone is a collaboration with the renowned Exploratorium of San Francisco.
The hours at GWIZ is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 am - 5pm. The museum is close on Monday with the exception of school holidays.
If you're eager to experience what GWIZ has to offer, the museum staff recommends that you work your way down from the EcoZone. Among the native dwellers in this habitat are turtles, snakes and fish - these may be viewed up close using a special reverse periscope. This zone is designed to teach you about Florida's native inhabitants. When you're done here, you're ready for the interactive exhibits.
Both kids and adults find the TechZone one of their favorite exhibits at the museum. If you've plans of housing your own tool shop in your garage, you'll get plenty of ideas here - you get a chance to mess around with screws, pulleys, levers, gears and hydraulics to hone in on the mechanics of how things work.
The WaveZone lets you try out the laser guitar and the laser harp to create light and sound waves and make music without touching the instruments. Amazing indeed. You're likely to be mesmerized by the Mindball, touted to be the most popular of all the zones in the museum. This ball is not just an ordinary ball because it enables partners compete against each other to see who can move matter (the ball) with his/her mind. The idea here is to be more relaxed, since it assists in winning.
And the BodyZone is an area where you can assess your flexibility, strength, and speed by measuring your heart rate, height and how high you're able to jump.
1001 Boulevard of the Arts
Sarasota, Florida 34236
(941) 309-GWIZ
http://www.gwiz.org
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