New Jersey museum brings science to life

By Malcolm Ritterap

updated 11:39 a.m. ET April 27, 2008

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Three or four times a day, a banana shows up at the Liberty Science Center and complains about a pain in its side. And that means it's time for some visiting kids to dress up like surgeons and scrub nurses, take a scalpel and go to work.

That's the cover story, anyway.

What's really happening is that kids are learning about science and enjoying it.

Whether there is a long-lasting payoff in future scientists won’t be known for a long time. But science educator Lisa Silverman is doing her best with her underage surgical team and the wide-eyed young audience watching them.

"Can everybody say the word 'autoclave?"' Silverman asked the other day while holding up some surgical instruments. "That's a fancy word for an oven-dishwasher that goes at a very high temperature and actually kills the germs."

As she guided the children through the operation, she wove in lessons about infections, surgery, the roles of operating room staff and the kinds of schooling her young audience would need to get those jobs.

To education experts, this is "informal" or "free-choice" science learning, which means it's happening outside of school.

This summer the National Academies, a congressionally chartered nonprofit group that advises the federal government, will release a report on what's known about the learning of science in such informal settings. That includes not only museums but also such places as zoos and aquariums.

The report comes as experts bemoan a lack of scientific education and literacy among Americans. They warn of a shortfall in homegrown engineers and scientists to keep the nation competitive, a general work force ill-equipped to function in an increasingly high-tech workplace, and a citizenry struggling to grasp complex public issues like stem cell research.

While that has led to calls for changes in schools, science museums — broadly defined to include a range of science-oriented places to visit — can also play a big role in teaching and promoting science to both children and adults, expert say.

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Studies are showing that such institutions stimulate interest, awareness, knowledge and understanding, said David Ucko, an expert on informal learning at the National Science Foundation, which requested this summer's study.

"They're very useful," said Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. "They're a valuable resource for making nature real to the young, hungry mind."

The Association of Science-Technology Centers, which represents such institutions, counts 353 members in the United States. Apart from welcoming visitors, such centers often offer programs to schools, field trips, teacher workshops and after-school programs.

At the Liberty Science Center, which expects about 850,000 guests this year, visitors can walk a high steel beam in the skyscraper exhibit or practice laboratory procedures. "With us, they’re right up touching the science," says Jeff Osowski, the center’s vice president of learning and teaching.

Seventy times a year, school groups and others gather in an auditorium to talk with surgeons as they perform operations on the other end of a live video link.

Bobbi Bremen, who teaches high school science in Livingston, N.J., has taken her anatomy and physiology classes to these programs since 2003. The students have done many animal dissections and computer-generated virtual dissections. But it's still startling to see a power saw cut open a human rib cage, smoke rising from a cauterizing scalpel blade or urine coming from a newly transplanted kidney, she said.

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