Discovery Center of Idaho

Try This!

What Can Be More Fun Than Hands-On Exhibits? How About An Exhibition Where You Make Things?

The exhibition Try This! is a hall filled with activities intended to engage a visitor’s interest in design, engineering and experimentation. The exhibits are open-ended, do-it-yourself endeavors covering an array of topics. There are no right answers, only trial and error and rewarding fun.

Visitors generate patterns on the Spirograph and Giant Harmonograph and be able to press DCI coins, as well. Visitors can trace a friend’s likeness onto paper using a Camera Lucida or cut screw threads and make a plastic nut. Engineer plank structures or build and test designs to fly on the Wind Table, draw cycloids, or make a stop-motion movie at Try This!

Each of the new exhibits highlighted below require visitors to read, create and make something unique. Visitors can take what they make home with them.

Coin Press

This press can strike a pattern on thin metal. Here we use aluminum foil and press pressure you make by hand. Monetary coins are made by this type of operation with very high machine pressure.

Wind Table

Our specially made "Wind Table" with a low pressure point in the middle is a great way to create and see how things fly or float. You will come up with your own unique designs that are crafted by you out of a variety of materials supplied at the table. Then, launch your creation into the lifting wind to see how it will fly. The low pressure area over the Wind Table will keep many of the floating objects over the middle of the table for quite a while.

Pattern Generator

The curved lines you create reflect the relationship between the size of the outer chain circle and the size of the sprocket. In mathematics, these curves are called hypocycloids. Spirographs are similar geometric toys that have been enjoyed since the 1960's.

These are only a few of the many brand new exhibits made just for "Try This!"