A snowy day at the Museum of Life and Science

A row of colorful child-sized coats hung last Monday afternoon in the rack at Durham's Museum of Life and Science, many of the sleeves dangling mittens attached to clip-on straps and warm hats peeping out of the pockets.

Just a few hours before, much of that gear had been covered with snow as evidence that its bearers had built snowmen and made snow angels, frolicking outside on one of Durham's rare snowy days. Because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, all children had been exempt from attending school. But while many of them did spend the morning in the pleasantly enjoyable weather, the parking lot of the museum was nearly full by that afternoon, as parents had brought their children to enjoy a unique learning experience.

The museum, located in Durham, provides children of all ages an opportunity to experience the wonders of science. Refreshingly distinct from traditional museums, where children can merely watch movies and observe exhibits, the Museum of Life and Science is crowded with engaging experiments that teach children that science is more than vocabulary words and test tubes.

The two story museum is thematically arranged, with sections devoted to various elements such as geology, space exploration and the body. Monday afternoon, however, most of the young visitors agreed that their favorite exhibit was the one about bats, which occupies space allocated to the temporary exhibit that the museum changes every few weeks.

This exhibit, and in fact the entire museum, is designed not to combat kids' short attention spans, as many museums do, but instead to work with them. Life size replicas of bat habitats-including a wooden shack and a tree-occupy one corner, and movies on large screens displaying how bats fly and eat are scattered throughout the room, permitting kids to observe each for a minute or two and then run to another part of the room. Some flock to a circular table in the corner where they can make crayon rubbings of various kinds of bats; others take turns trying on a pair of simulated bat ears, which allow the participant to hear almost as well as bats can.

But children are not the only people who benefit from the exhibit. Upstairs, Ed Best moves around a large transparent globe filled with sand designed to simulate a sandstorm. "There are things that appeal to all ages," he says, a little embarrassed to be caught enjoying himself as much as his daughters, Kristen, 12, and Erin, 14. Nearby, kids run their hands up and down a pole to create the motion in a tank to simulate a tornado.

As the title of the museum implies, there are also examples of life. Four large fish occupy a long tank, resting and waiting for visitors to push the left or right arrow button and cause the water in the tank to begin to flow strongly. The fish jump immediately to life, swimming against the new current to retain their location in the water and avoid being pushed into the wall. Another exhibit allows participants to position various shapes in a tank with flowing colored water and observe how the classic fish shape allows the water to flow the most efficiently.

In the outer-space section of the museum, three-year-old Bevan Somers is fascinated by a movie showing a row of five chimpanzees when they were passengers on a space shuttle. She laughs as the chimps wave their arms in the air and make screeching noises.