Intimidated by math? New Exploration Place exhibit aims to make learning it fun

A traveling exhibit that opens Saturday at Exploration Place celebrates the mathematical thinking that is the realm of artists, architects, engineers and musicians. It’s a celebration, because math equations can create beautiful things: music, art – and roller coasters.

“Design Zone,” an exhibit out of Oregon that will run through Jan. 5, shows that math’s reputation as unreachable and unnecessary is undeserved.

“It’s designed to make math more relatable,” said Christina Bluml, director of marketing for Exploration Place.

“We have three areas: music production, video game development, and extreme sports. So if you feel intimidated by math for whatever reason, those are relatable topics. You can have a little bit of fun and realize ‘I learned some math, and it wasn’t as painful as I thought.’ ”

Participants in “Design Zone” go from station to station to play with concepts including patterns, variables, scale, slope and ratios to see what is created as a result. The results can be thrilling, beautiful or scary.

“It’s really cool. The idea is to make it as much fun as possible to learn math,” said Dan Stubbs of Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, who built much of the exhibit (using geometry, trigonometry and calculus).

“Design Zone” is almost all hands-on; children 5 and up can take part, with the younger ones needing a parent’s help with the instructions at each station. You do have to take some time and follow the instructions to make the activities work – and to learn the lessons:

▪ At the Digital Strings station, you can adjust the length of string (the longer the string, the lower the note) to compose a song that can be slowed down or sped up and adjusted to get just the tune you want. It can be so relaxing that you’re tempted to drift off to sleep to your own tune. Or to become a composer.

▪ At the Marble Maze, kids dictate the level of difficulty of a video game by adjusting the bounciness of a ball and the hole size. (It’s actually an exercise in algebra.) The resulting equation is important, because the kids actually play the game by controlling a giant tilt table.

▪ There’s a ball launcher that makes you take into account the launch angle for getting the ball a certain distance and into a bucket. You can see how video-game designers use graphs and equations to predict how far something will travel.

▪ You can race wheels down a track to see how one is faster than another based on the way the weight is distributed on the wheel.

▪ The “Drawing in Motion” station is like a big Etch-a-Sketch that requires two people working at the same time to create a particular shape.

“This exhibit will exercise your brain. It will get your math brain working,” Bluml said.

You can also get some dancing in. Lights, motion and music are part of the vibe of the exhibit.

“Sensory stimulation – plenty of it,” Stubbs said of the atmosphere. “Anyone under the age of 30 enjoys it.” Those who are older may want to move through it a bit faster.

Kids will take it in, having fun, but at some point – today or in the future – they will connect the dots and realize they’ve learned something mathematical or scientific, Bluml and Stubbs said. It may even lead to a career in science or math.

“It’s just becoming more and more important in this country,” Stubbs said. “We need more engineers, mathematicians, scientists to be competitive. It’s a little bit subversive. They were just having a good time. Someday they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah. There’s 22 frets on my guitar. Oh yeah …’ ”

This story was originally published September 30, 2015 at 4:57 PM with the headline "Intimidated by math? New Exploration Place exhibit aims to make learning it fun."