Frankly, there is not a lot of Franklin here

Last Wednesday I took the kids to the Franklin Institute of Science.  I was hoping there would be at least a small display about Franklin's scientific contributions and inventions, but the closest thing they had was a giant statue in the foyer.  I guess it's too hard to blend science and history :)  Well at least it was a good starting point for our explorations.
Luckily this museum is one of our participating free ones so we didn't have to pay to get in, just for parking.  I'm getting better at anticipating when and where the field trip groups will hit so we only had a brief encounter with the craziness of hordes of unsupervised children mauling the displays.  

There is a lot to see at the museum and we didn't get to everything, but here are some of our favorites...

Kid Science was a room set aside for 5-9 year old exploration of science favorites.  Ben's favorite part was using air tubes to shoot balls across the room.  Always a winner if it involves projectiles and shooting.

Dallin and Ben also spent a good deal of time figuring out this interesting ball maze wall.The train room is basically filled with (you guessed it) a huge train. Evidently as steam engines were replaced by diesel engines one of the local railroad companies sold the museum an old engine for $1.  I have no idea how they got it into the museum, but it has a wee bit of track and you can ride it forward about 2 feet and then back 2 feet very slowly if you are willing to wait in a fairly long line.  Although the ride itself is unimpressive, the fun part for my kids was sliding down the walls in the coal chute.
I guess the train was such a hit the invested in a small jet for the flight room.  This room also had a bunch of cool experiments with air and wings and even a model of the Wright Brothers plane.  Here is Dallin preparing for take off.

My favorite room was the heart room.  Having just studied the human body in great depth last year this was a good review.  They had replicas of hearts from various animals that displayed the different sizes and features.  They also had an exploration table with brains to look at. Lauren liked the benches. 

Of course the highlight was following the bloods path through the giant heart. 

We topped the day off by watching a fun video at the planetarium called Cosmic Collisions.  I am always in awe when I consider the complex and intricate workings of our universe.  I am equally awed by the complex and intricate workings of our bodies.  We live in such an amazing world.  I can't imagine that anyone who has truly pondered the workings of our world could doubt the hand of a supreme being in it's construction.

The kids were sad that we didn't get to see the rest of the museum, but I promised them we would return.