St Louis Science Center

I always thought that the Science Center looked quite cool from I40/64, with the domed roof & overbridge & the James S. McDonnell Planetarium with its striking architecture & cool colour changing at night. As the center is another free, child-friendly venue in St Louis, we paid a visit on a cold Sunday afternoon.

The center has more than 700 hands-on exhibits. We saw a life-sized animated Tyrannosaurus Rex & Triceratops, played a laser harp in Cyberville, explored the science of engineering in Structures (including building a replica of the St Louis Gateway Arch), checked the speed of some of the cars using I40/64 with the radar guns in the overbridge, visited the new 'Flight!' Gallery in the tunnel between the main building & the Planetarium, & spent a few chilly minutes in the science playground outside the center.

When we arrived at the center we saw that they were showing the latest Harry Potter movie on their OMNIMAX® screen. This is a four-story screen in a domed theater. The OMNIMAX is a high-fidelity, 70MM motion picture system that uses a specially designed IMAX® camera & the largest film frame in motion picture history - 10 times the size of a standard 35MM frame. The film is carried through the projector horizontally, instead of vertically & as the projection room is at the same level as the entrance to the theater, & has a glass back wall, you can watch the film running through the equipment. By using a fisheye lens on the projector, the images can be transferred accurately onto the curved, domed screen. The screen is really big & the picture very clear. Maybe it was beacuse we were sat right at the front of the theater, but both Cheryl & I felt sick whilst watching the film (which is apparently a common occurence with this type of projection technique).

We didn't get enough time to see all of the exhibits & so we'll probably go back again, but this time we'll give the OMNIMAX® a miss.