Ontario Science Centre
Encyclopedia
Ontario Science Centre (or in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

: Centre des sciences de l'Ontario) is a science museum
Science museum
A science museum or a science centre is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in museology have broadened the range of...

 in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, near the Don Valley Parkway
Don Valley Parkway
The Don Valley Parkway is a controlled-access six-lane municipal expressway in Toronto connecting the Gardiner Expressway in downtown Toronto with Ontario Highway 401, the Macdonald–Cartier Freeway. North of Highway 401, it continues as Ontario Highway 404. The parkway runs through...

 about 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) northeast of downtown
Downtown Toronto
Downtown Toronto is the central business district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is approximately bounded by Bloor Street to the north, Lake Ontario to the south, the Don River to the east, and Bathurst Street to the west...

 on Don Mills Road just south of Eglinton Avenue
Eglinton Avenue
Eglinton Avenue, originally known as the Richview Sideroad within Etobicoke, is an east-west arterial thoroughfare in Toronto and Mississauga, in the Canadian province of Ontario. Within Toronto, Eglinton Avenue is the only road which crosses through all six former boroughs...

 East. It is built down the side of a wooded ravine formed by one branch of the Don River.

History

Planning for the centre started in 1961 during Toronto's massive expansion of the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1964 the famous Toronto architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Raymond Moriyama
Raymond Moriyama
Raymond Moriyama, CC, O.Ont is a Japanese-Canadian architect. He has designed several buildings at Brock University from the 1970s through the latest campus expansion and is the University's former chancellor....

 was hired to design the site. The design, consisting of three main buildings connected by a series of bridge
Bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span physical obstacles such as a body of water, valley, or road, for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle...

s and escalator
Escalator
An escalator is a moving staircase – a conveyor transport device for carrying people between floors of a building. The device consists of a motor-driven chain of individual, linked steps that move up or down on tracks, allowing the step treads to remain horizontal.Escalators are used around the...

s, follows the natural contours of the Don River ravine, into which the Centre descends. Construction started in 1966 with plans to make it a part of the city's 1967 Canadian Centennial
Canadian Centennial
The Canadian Centennial was a year long celebration held in 1967 when Canada celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation. Celebrations occurred throughout the year but culminated on Dominion Day, July 1. 1967 coins were different from previous years' issues, with animals on each...

 celebrations. It was officially named the Centennial Centre of Science and Technology. However construction was not complete in 1967, and the Science Centre did not open to the public until two years later, on September 26, 1969.

At the time, the Science Centre was a pioneer for its hands on approach to science, which was later duplicated in San Francisco's Exploratorium
Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco with over 475 participatory exhibits, all of them made onsite, that mix science and art. It also aims to promote museums as informal education centers....

 and Detroit's Museum of Science and Technology. Unlike a traditional museum, where the exhibits are for display only, the majority of the exhibits at the Science Centre were interactive, while many others were live demonstrations (metalworking for example). The Communications room contained a number of computerized displays, including a very popular tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe, also called wick wack woe and noughts and crosses , is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The X player usually goes first...

 game run on a PDP-11
PDP-11
The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years...

.

The centre was very popular during the 1970s, but by the mid to later 1980s visiting rates had dropped considerably. Most of the displays were the originals, and had become either outdated, or worn out. During the 1990s these issues were addressed by opening the Science Centre to corporate funding. In 1996 the province's first OMNIMAX
Omnimax
Omnimax may refer to:* A variation of the IMAX film format that is projected on an angled dome* A shorthand expression for a deity that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and/or omnibenevolent...

 theatre opened in an expanded entrance area and additional changes soon followed. The most recent of these changes is the $40 million Agents of Change project, the final phase of which opened in June 2006.

Exhibits

The Centre has several hundred interactive and passive exhibits throughout the buildings. They feature everything in science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

 and nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

. They feature geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

, the science of nature
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

 (in the west wing), astronomical
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 science, how to play music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...

 in the south wing, human anatomy
Human anatomy
Human anatomy is primarily the scientific study of the morphology of the human body. Anatomy is subdivided into gross anatomy and microscopic anatomy. Gross anatomy is the study of anatomical structures that can be seen by the naked eye...

, communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...

 and bias
Bias
Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives. Bias can come in many forms.-In judgement and decision making:...

, and some miscellaneous artifacts of science. The astronomical wing, which was closed for renovation since Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

's demotion in August 2006, has now been refurbished and reopened to the public, featuring Toronto's only operating planetarium, as well as one of the few Mars
Mars meteorite
A martian meteorite is a rock that formed on the planet Mars, was ejected from Mars by the impact of an asteroid or comet, and landed on the Earth. Of over 53000 meteorites that have been found on Earth, 99 are martian...

 and Moon rock
Moon rock
Moon rock describes rock that formed on the Earth's moon. The term is also loosely applied to other lunar materials collected during the course of human exploration of the Moon.The rocks collected from the Moon are measured by radiometric dating techniques...

s on public display in Canada. Canadian astronaut Julie Payette
Julie Payette
Julie Payette, OC, CQ is a Canadian engineer and a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. Payette has completed two spaceflights, STS-96 and STS-127, logging more than 25 days in space...

 recorded narration for several of the exhibits (some of which were updated to reflect the fact Pluto was no longer considered a planet).

The Great Hall is home to a massive, computer-controlled kinetic sculpture, "Cloud" by Toronto installation artist, David Rokeby
David Rokeby
David Rokeby is an artist who has been making works of electronic, video and installation art since 1982.His early work Very Nervous System is acknowledged as a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments...

.

The Centre hosted "Harry Potter The Exhibition
Harry Potter The Exhibition
-Harry Potter: The Exhibition:- Overview :Harry Potter: The Exhibition is a traveling exhibition featuring hundreds of authentic props, costumes, artifacts, and set dressings from all of the Harry Potter films...

", a collection of props from the film series. The exhibit opened on April 9, 2010 and ran until Labour Day 2010. Recent major exhibitions have included Body Worlds
Body Worlds
Body Worlds is a traveling exhibition of preserved human bodies and body parts that are prepared using a technique called plastination to reveal inner anatomical structures...

. The latest temporary exhibit is "Leonardo da Vinci's Workshop", featuring physical models of da Vinci's inventions, built from drawings in his Codices. It also includes interactive touch-screen digital reproductions of the Codices, Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.

Agents of Change

Agents of Change is the Ontario Science Centre's innovation initiative that is transforming more than 30% of its indoor spaces and creating new outdoor experiences. The Agents of Change initiative raised more than $47 million to date.

Ontario Science Centre Science School

The Ontario Science Centre Science School (OSCSS) offers credited grade 12 University Preparation courses in 3 of the following of the student's choice: Physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

, Biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

, Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

, Calculus
Calculus
Calculus is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of modern mathematics education. It has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus, which are related by the fundamental theorem...

, and Advanced Functions
Function (mathematics)
In mathematics, a function associates one quantity, the argument of the function, also known as the input, with another quantity, the value of the function, also known as the output. A function assigns exactly one output to each input. The argument and the value may be real numbers, but they can...

. Students from all over Ontario apply and are selected to spend a semester at the OSCSS. The OSCSS offers enriched learning in small and informal classes of no more than 28 students. While at the Science Centre, students earn practicum hours through volunteering and interacting with the visitors.

Ontario Science Centre aquatic play fountain

As originally built, the Science Centre had a large fountain area directly in front of the entranceway, located to create a traffic roundabout. The original water fountain has been rejuvenated to become the main centerpiece of Exploration Plaza (Telus
TELUS
Telus is a national telecommunications company in Canada that provides a wide range of telecommunications products and services including internet access, voice, entertainment, video, and satellite television. The company is based in Burnaby, British Columbia, part of Greater Vancouver...

cape), which opened to the public on 20 September 2006. The new fountain is also a hydraulophone
Hydraulophone
A hydraulophone is a tonal acoustic musical instrument played by direct physical contact with water where sound is generated or affected hydraulically. Typically sound is produced by the same hydraulic fluid in contact with the player's fingers...

 (and a hydraulic-action pipe organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...

) in which anyone walking into the space can play . Blocking the flow of any one of the 57 water jets in the fountain forces the water across to a corresponding organ pipe, where it makes a loud sound as the water is forced out through the speaking mouth of the pipe. The lowest 12 notes in each division (north division and south division) of the organ are visible as pipes arranged in a circle. The North Division consists of stopped hydrapaisons (similar to diapaisons but running on water rather than air), whereas the South Division pipes are open at both ends (sound emerges from the ends rather than from a mouth as with the North pipes). The North organ console consists of 12 water jets, whereas the south console consists of 45 water jets.

The organ is supplied with water from three Pentair pumps, supplying water at a rate of 130 gallons per minute, each by way of a three inch (76 mm) diameter water line, as well as air from three Ingersol Rand four cylinder air compressors, each having a 25 hp motor. Since the instrument runs on both air and water, it may be regarded as a hybrid hydraulophone and pneumatophone, but because it is played by blocking water jets rather than air holes, it is principally a hydraulophone.

For the winter of November 21, 2007, the aquatic play facility was temporarily switched from water-operation to air-operation, effectively becoming perhaps one of the first pneumatic-play facilities, where visitors can frolic in a fountain of air jets. In this mode of operation the fountain becomes a woodwind instrument.

Teluscape, the outdoor exhibit space, is open to the public.

Controversies

In 1990 it was revealed the Ontario Science Centre signed a contract with Oman
Oman
Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...

 to design a children's museum. The Ontario Science Centre agreed to boycott Israeli goods and services while under contract. The Ontario Science Centre later amended the contract to read all goods sold to Oman would be produced in North America. The centre's Director General Mark Abbott was later sacked for knowingly signing the original contract.

External links


Affiliations

The Museum is affiliated with: CMA
Canadian Museums Association
The Canadian Museums Association is a national organization for the promotion of museums in Canada.The Canadian Museums Association is the national organization for the advancement of the Canadian museum sector, representing Canadian museum professionals both within Canada and internationally. The...

, CHIN
Canadian Heritage Information Network
The Canadian Heritage Information Network is a Canadian government-supported organization that provides a networked interface to Canada's heritage, largely through the World Wide Web. It aims to give access to Canada's heritage for both Canadians and a worldwide audience, by supporting the...

, and Virtual Museum of Canada
Virtual Museum of Canada
The Virtual Museum of Canada is Canada's national virtual museum. With a directory of over 3,000 Canadian heritage institutions and a database of over 600 virtual exhibits, the VMC brings together Canada's museums regardless of size or geographical location.The VMC includes virtual exhibits,...

.
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