Models organize big ideas for scientists and students; they identify and test questions and are ideal tools for thinking. The Earth/Moon Rotation orrery shows our planetary movement around the sun and demonstrates lunar orbit and moon phases when illuminated with an accompanying light.
A complete light laboratory in a box. Construct a box that captures and focuses images. Use it as a camera obscura...an artist's drawing tool. Or make it into a model of the eye. Then rearrange the elements. Direct a light source on an image inside the box to project the image into a darkened room – recreate one of Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest leaps of invention: A Projector.
Construct a music machine. Hear the logic of Leonardo's mind at work as he invents the first modern robot, an automatic drummer whose rhythms can be reprogrammed flexibly and whose tempos adjust automatically. Invent your own cadences.
