For
Immediate Release
July 5, 2000 |
Donald
Lehr
Nolan/Lehr Group
212/967-8200 |
When Was The Last Time A Roller Coaster Visited You?
Exhibit Of Engineering Wonders Continues Nationwide Tour
How does a roller coaster manage to make riders feel like it's about to jump off the track
without really doing it? How do you program a spacecraft to adjust itself
millions of miles away from earth? How do you suspend a dam?
Engineers know how because that's what they do, but for everybody else, a traveling
exhibit now making its way across America is helping to open people's eyes
to the entertaining -- yes, entertaining -- side of engineering. Breaking Through: The Creative
Engineer, showcasing the wonders and marvels of engineering, has reached the halfway
point of its successful tour of the country. The exhibition opened at the National
Building Museum in Washington during National Engineers Week in 1998, has toured since January
1999 and now continues on to four more cities over the next year and a half.
Most people don't readily associate engineering with entertainment,
but the exhibit proves that, behind the scenes, many seemingly commonplace things are anything but
common. The sweep of Breaking Through reflects a modern engineering panorama ranging
from roller coaster design to the daring construction of Colorado's Hanging Lake Viaduct to the
delicate finessing of the Voyager 2's maneuvers, from Earth, as it charts a path to distant
planets.
The exhibit is currently housed at the Museum of Discovery in Little Rock, Arkansas,
where it opened June 1 after spending three months at the Kirkpatrick
Science Museum at Omniplex in Oklahoma City. After the exhibit closes in Little Rock on
August 31, next stop is the Cincinnati Museum Center October 1 through December 31, and then on to
Rochester, New York, Alamogordo, New Mexico, and Lubbock, Texas in 2001. (Editors please
note: A complete listing of venues and contact phone numbers can be found at the
end of this release. Color slides from the exhibition are also available.)
Breaking Through: The Creative Engineer examines, through a series of eight case
studies, the role and process of creativity in the field of engineering.
The exhibit blends these engineering wonders with traditional examples of creativity, such as visual
art, music, architecture and literature. Visitors then exercise their own creativity
with interactive displays, games and puzzles that reveal how engineering creativity constantly remakes
the world.
Besides offering a look at engineering wonders, the exhibit also investigates how these
wonders are made. The exhibit demonstrates how challenging preconceptions,
connecting different fields, improvising, defying convention, visualizing new
possibilities, reorienting priorities, and other creative processes contribute to the engineer's work.
Breaking Through is supported by National Engineers Week, a coalition of major
engineering societies and U.S. corporations. More information on the Breaking Through
traveling exhibit is available through the individual host centers, or from
the Association of Science-Technology Centers, Exhibition Services at (202) 783-7200 or
exhibits@astc.org.
Breaking Through: The Creative Engineer / Itinerary
June 1 - August 31, 2000
Museum of Discovery
Little Rock, AR / (501) 396-7050
October 1 - December 31, 2000
Cincinnati Museum Center
Cincinnati, OH / (513) 556-5435
February 1 - April 30, 2001
Rochester Museum & Science Center
Rochester, NY / (716) 271-4552
June 1 - August 31, 2001
Space Center
Alamogordo, NM / (505) 437-2840
October 1 - December 31, 2001
Science Spectrum
Lubbock, TX / (806) 748-1040
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