TELUS World of Science, Calgary - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Telus World of Science – Calgary 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...

with interactive exhibits, multimedia presentations and educational demonstrations in Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, 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...

. There are three traveling exhibits every year and more permanent exhibits that are designed on-site. The Discovery Dome Theatre features films from across North America. There are more than 304,000 visitors annually, including over 54,000 students. In 2006 the Creative Kids Museum opened at the Telus World of Science, offering art-based learning. The original site, located on 11 Street SW in Calgary's Downtown West End

Downtown West End, Calgary

The Downtown West End is a neighbourhood within the western portions of downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is bounded to the north by the Bow River, to the east by 9th Street W, to the south by the CPR Tracks and to the west by 14th Street W....

, closed on June 27, 2011, and was replaced by a new science centre called Telus Spark. The new science centre is located on a 15 acres (60,702.9 m²) site at 220 St. Georges Drive NW in Nose Creek Valley, north of the Calgary Zoo

Calgary Zoo

The Calgary Zoo is located in Bridgeland, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, just east of the city's downtown and adjacent to the Inglewood and East Village neighbourhoods. It is accessible via Calgary's C-Train light rail system, by car via Memorial Drive and by bicycle and footpath via the Bow River...

. Telus Spark opened on October 29, 2011.

History

Telus World of Science – Calgary originally opened as the Calgary Centennial Planetarium on July 1, 1967. In 1983 the Calgary Science Centre Society began a bid to bring a science centre to Calgary and in 1987 they received an operating agreement that would transform the planetarium

Planetarium

A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...

into the Calgary Science Centre. The Calgary Science Centre was renamed Telus World of Science – Calgary after a $9 Million donation from 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...

Corporation on April 27, 2005.

Feature exhibits

Telus World of Science – Calgary hosts astronomy courses, school programs, youth programs, sleepovers, birthday parties, and various spring and summer science and art camps. From 2010 to 2011, the Telus World of Science hosted three traveling exhibitions which converted the whole of the building, with the exception of the Creative Kids Museum. The last exhibition closed June 27, 2011 when the 11th Street location was closed permanently.

Creative Kids Museum

In 2006 the Creative Kids Museum was chosen as the City of Calgary’s celebratory project for Alberta’s Centennial. Krista Schlosser, Founding President of the Creative Kids Museum, wanted to create a place for children to expand their minds. The Creative Kids Museum is the first children’s museum in western Canada. There are five permanent exhibit areas ("Mindscapes," "Theatre," "Perception," "Scribble Dee Dee" and "Sound and Music") representing art, drama, music and visual arts. Literature is represented throughout. Every few weeks, a different local artist demonstrates their artistic talents.

Discovery Dome Theatre

The Discovery Dome Theatre is a giant dome screen. It is a space for in-house productions for school programs, and at least three large format feature films are shown there each year. The Discovery Dome Theatre is also used to simulate the nighttime sky for astronomy courses.

WOWTown

WOWTown was an exhibition hall which had 4000 square feet (371.6 m²) of space oriented towards children ages 3 to 7. Children took part in activities such as crawling, building, using pulleys and wheels, moving sailboats in a play stream, making rubbings and observing a real bee hive in action. WOWTown, along with other displays and exhibits, was removed in 2010 in order to display travelling exhibitions before the closing of the 11th Street location.

Amazement Park

The Amazement Park is an outdoor interactive playground.

The exhibits teach children how to be a human sundial, lift a 320 kg globe, become a human bobsled, and create a musical rumble.

External links

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