Become driver in exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum

by Jude Timms on 24 Jun 2014 Where did you go today? How did you get there? Did you walk, cycle, fly, drive or sail? Over 4.5 million people living in the Sydney Greater Metropolitan Area are making nearly 16.5 million trips on an average weekday and travelling over 142 million kilometres*.

In Going Places, a new family exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum, you become the driver and discover the technology we have developed for travel and transport across our lands and oceans.

This hands-on exhibition gives families the opportunity to experience and react to a number of scenarios in which they can drive, load, control and design all forms of transport.

Developed by Scitech in Perth, Western Australia Going Places explores the technology that get us around every day, overcoming obstacles like gravity, currents, waves and friction, as well as how transport has influenced our daily lives. Visitors will also see new technology and get a glimpse of where our future is headed.

Families enter the exhibition through a real-life metal detector and can find their own city on a three dimensional planet earth, demonstrating how vast our world is to travel across.

Children can climb inside a large model plane to simulate how a pilot navigates the skies, hop on board a hoverdisk to learn how the cushion of hovercraft travels across water or sail model ‘land yachts’ to experience the challenges of sailing into the wind.

In ‘Rock the Boat’ families can learn how tricky it is to pack a cargo ship by loading blocks onto a ship; while the ‘Luggage Loader’ interactive allows families to test their mathematical skills while learning how luggage is processed in a busy airport.

The sustainability of transport is addressed in the ‘Transport footprint’ interactive where families can take the carbon challenge to find out how their travel impacts on the planet and discover how simple changes in their lifestyle can reduce their carbon footprint.

And with the population steadily rising there is a need to develop more efficient, sustainable forms of transport. In Going Places children will learn about future modes of transport and come up with their own ingenious designs.

Supported by the Australian Marine Safety Authority, Going Places opens on 16 August, runs until 22 February 2015 and is included in the museum’s Big Ticket - $27 adult, $16 child, $70 family. Call 02 9298 3777 or log onto website for more information.