The MOST, Syracuse, Part 3

The MOST– the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, NY, is a big place. We spent the better part of 3 hours exploring everything. Downstairs, the museum has a play area for little kids, and cave-looking rooms with loads of displays and interactive stuff. You can read about our visits in Part 1, Part 2, and a big post about the amazing Toothpick City II.

I loved the coral reef in the fish tank. Wow!

A lot of the displays in the cave halls had to do with the local geology of Syracuse, which is situated in a briny, swampy area of central New York. Syracuse once supplied the nation with much of its salt, up until 1926 when the industry waned. There was a ton of science, geology, and history to absorb. It was a lot of information! Some were a little overwhelmed.

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The MOST, Syracuse, NY: Part 2

You can read Part 1 of our visit here, and about the marvelous Toothpick City II display, here. We spent about 3 hours, exploring everything we could at the museum– it was a blast!

Hands down, the best part was this– a “green room” display that had a TV with a basketball player. You could walk onto the platform in the green area, and appear on the green with the basketball player! It was SO COOL!! This must be how the modern Star Wars movies are filmed, with live action before a green screen and the animated critters on a TV or something. I just loved this thing!

The kids seemed to really enjoy the Van de Graff generator and other gadgets like it. I think they perhaps enjoyed it a bit TOO much.

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Museum of Science & Technology, Syracuse

We visited the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse last week. Usually the museum is closed on Mondays, but due to the Easter vacation, they’d opened their doors. The building is situated at the Armory in Syracuse, a traffic-heavy circle in the heart of downtown. It took some navigating to get there. Parking was nowhere to be found (and it was 75 cents per hour, for a limit of two hours). So I parked in a parking lot across from the Erie Canal Museum that we’d visited last year, and we walked to the MOST (a brisk 15 minute walk).

The museum has a very nice planetarium that we’d seen before, years ago. Because of time constraints, I opted to go for just the museum visit. After paying the admission (which was reasonable), we wandered into the main part of the building. To our amazement, we saw a huge platform with oddly-shaped structures on it. Upon closer inspection, we saw that this was the famous Toothpick City II display, ongoing before our eyes! When it’s completed, it will be the largest toothpick structure in the world with almost 4 million toothpicks used when completed! The creator, Stan Munro, was there working on a new creation.

I have already written a post, loaded with photos, about Toothpick City II and Stan’s story. It’s just amazing! And you must go to Stan’s website to see his gallery of other structures. I can’t believe it’s all in toothpicks!

After we oo’ed and ahh’ed for half an hour there, we decided to pull ourselves away and explore the rest of the museum. It’s a HUGE museum, and we were there for 3 hours! The MOST is a science museum, with science-oriented displays and tools to explore and learn more about our world. There is too much there to cover all the bases here– I’ll simply detail some of our favorites, spreading it out into two or three posts.

We enjoyed playing with some lights displays. There’s one on ultraviolet light that we liked. Reminded me so much of the 1980s!

A display showing how monochrome light works was fun.

A human brain. Ick. Wonder who donated it? Someone from the NY legislature?

Ooo and this was cool– surround yourself with a big bubble! None of the kids were very enthusiastic about trying it, but when I begged, they gave in. Making a big bubble is much harder than it looks.

We got everyone involved. Read more

Toothpick City at MOST in Syracuse, NY

The kids and I made the trip out to Syracuse, and stopped in at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST). We encountered a surprise treat at the museum: Stan Munro’s Toothpick City II. Wow! We walked in to the main arena to see a vast display of the most incredible works of art I’ve seen! All done with toothpicks and Elmer’s glue!

The Leaning Tower of Pisa. I love this one most of all.

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

And London Tower Bridge!

The platform is about 25′ by 30′, and the toothpick structures are all built to a 1:164 scale. Some of the toothpicks towers and temples are over 16 feet high. Others are under a foot high. Since the towers and temples are all built in proportion to each other, seeing them all next to each other is stunning. And Stan has done an incredible job, with amazing attention to detail.

This is a closeup of the Aspire Tower of Qatar. It’s huge!

Stan was working on more structures at the MOST while we ooo’ed and ahh’ed. So we got a chance to talk to him and ask him how he got started on this project. I found out he is a wacky radio guy! I used to be one, too! (Well, I was a wacky radio girl– I had my own morning show on a small station in the Southern Tier, near Binghamton, NY). Stan said he was in-between jobs, working on his toothpicking hobby, when he was asked to display some of his work. The reception was enthusiastic, and demand became so high that Stan was soon earning a living, doing what he loves!

Stan has a website, Toothpick City, which is really fun to peruse. It has a great gallery of his work (including structures he built for Toothpick City I, permanently on display in Spain), and a humorous biography:

When Stan Munro started Toothpick City I in 2003, he convinced his wife that this might be an actual job. Whether she really believed him, or just reveled at the thought of a husband spending all his time in the basement, she supported him. She helped him in every way imaginable, and when Toothpick City sold in 2005, she helped him spend the money.

Here are more photos I took. Perhaps some of you will recognize the structures. Read more