Facts from the Whiteboard
One of my responsibilities here at Science Space is to enhance the visitor experience. One of the ways I try to do that is to provide our floor staff with extra information about our exhibits.
Over the last month or so, I’ve been spending way too much time decorating our massive break-room whiteboard with space facts and other bits of random information they can use to start conversations. I’m actually really proud of them and my “mixed media” skills.
No… really.
… ignore the errant cleaning supplies…
I mean, I say “I spent way too much time…” but to be fair, the idea is to give our Science Space Ambassadors something to remember. I’ve been updating the facts every two weeks or so. Here’s some of the highlights.
We have NSW’s only Planetarium so I wanted to include some space facts. I remembered hearing about how geologists get sent so many rocks that people think are meteorites that they came up with a name for them: meteorwrongs. Hah!
My friend Jake, (@spacejayk on twitter), told me about how you could fit all of the other planets in between the distance between the Earth and the Moon. That one literally blew my mind so I felt like I had to include it, along with the fact that Saturn’s rings actually take up slightly more space than all of those combined!
This week’s iteration of the space spot is our address here at Science Space:
Our address, complete with stamp. Also there’ll be more about the Superhero Science Spot in a later post!
One of the first “Exhibit Extrapolation” facts I did is still my favourite:
We have a bar you can hang from with a timer that shows you how long you can hang on for. The thing is though, that even the strongest person can only hang on for a little over 3 minutes! Our timer is set for about a minute at the moment and it’s really fun to be able to tell visitors that they’re really close to the world record!
Feedback about the whiteboard facts has been positive. I’m not sure if our staff are actually making use of the information but I’m ok with that. It’s good for them to have things like this in their arsenal, filed away at the back of their minds.
… Plus it’s really fun. Like, really, really, really fun.
Science Space is a not-for-profit organisation at the University of Wollongong. All work presented here is my own, created while employed as an Experience Officer.
