A new interactive exhibit opened today at the Discovery Museum.
For the next three weeks North Bay residents and visitors can experience Beyond Human Limits, a highly interactive exhibition, developed and produced by Science North.
“It has been wonderful to see how interactive the exhibit is and how visitors are engaging with it. We are having a lot of fun,” said Naomi Hehn, North Bay Museum Director/Curator.
“I think it is wonderful we have this exhibit in North Bay for three weeks and I really hope the community comes out to experience this.”
This 1,000 square foot customized exhibit which is a smaller version of the original 6,000 square foot exhibit which originated at Science North in Sudbury. This new exhibit showcases the science, creativity, and innovation in extreme sports.
An elementary school class from the area was the first to test it out. Hehn says the students loved it.
“I was just watching the grade four class in there, there was a really long lineup for the virtual reality (VR) set where you are basically experiencing going down a huge mountain with VR technology but there are also a lot of other active elements that I think are really great as well,” she said.
“There’s a slack line that you can try to balance and go across and get an idea what that is like. There is a cliffhanger challenge where you are seeing how long you could hang on to the edge of a cliff. There is also a snowboarding challenge where you are setting up slopes and figuring out the math of how that works.”
The Beyond Human Limits Northern Tour was only one portion of what was unveiled today by Science North officials. The northern science centre also announced that new ‘THINK Hubs’ that will be installed as part of the visitor experience at Northern attractions including North Bay, Kenora, Fort Frances, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, and Timmins.
These are modeled on the popular THINK visitor experience recently opened at Science North.
At THINK Hubs, visitors will be engaged and inspired in innovative and iterative learning processes.
“Not everyone can come to science north and having a strong vibrant north network of museums and attractions in Northern Ontario is vitally important and if we can play a role in making museums and attractions more sustainable I think it is an important thing for us to do so ideally the THINK Hub will attract people here at the North Bay Museum on a repeated basis, allows them to connect with future members, donors, and it really creates an inspiring opportunity for folks in North Bay to be able to engage in that experience,” stated Guy Labine, Science North CEO.
The THINK Hub in North Bay is expected to open by the fall.