One Tank Trip: Lancaster Science Factory
For some students, getting through science class can be a chore.
But what if you could fly a paper airplane, launch a tennis ball, and
play the drums instead of sitting in a classroom? WFMZ's Karin Mallett
takes us to a new playground where you might learn a few things this
week's One Tank Trip.
>> REPORTER: The super bounce doesn't sound very scientific. Neither does the roller coaster. Or the whisper dish. But at the Lancaster Science Factory in Lancaster County, you're learning without even knowing it.
>> Bill Chronister: This is kinda like what you would like to do in class.
>> REPORTER: Bill Chronister taught science for 41 years. Now retired, he's our explainer at the factory, letting us know why what we're doing works the way it does. If you watch the balls here, the white ball goes all the way up to the ceiling. Each one stores energy. It releases it and away it goes.
>> REPORTER: More than 40 exhibits. Not far from the floor, Tangible explanations of Newton's Laws of Motion and Bernoulli's principle. From the gravity racers to the flight deck.. It's every kids dream to fly paper airplanes and not get in trouble. Air power's obvious at the parachute launch. A lot of the kids ask me well can we make one big enough to send them up and the answer is probably not. Their mother might not like that. A very popular exhibit here. The target age is grades 3 through 8. But we found plenty to keep busy. With just about anything in here you can try anything and almost everything is child proof. So there's not really much that can go wrong. Testing out that theory at the big arch, where the building blocks are made of styrofoam. Even without fasteners, the styrofoam arch will hold the weight. It's called compression. Each block is holding the other in place.
>> Evanna Morris: I just hope they get inspired to just explore and be open minded about trying new things.