The best science museums are like playgrounds. They allow you to wander around, reading, watching and learning and being amazed as you go. It’s not just a feast for the mind; it’s also fun for the hands.  You get to interact with and experience science, pushing buttons, pulling levers, watching balls drop and electricity spark.

The best science museums bring out the kid in all of us.

This Saturday a really great science museum is going to be host to a really great exhibition. The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego is the first stop on a California tour for “Super Cells: The Power of Stem Cells”. The exhibit is coming here fresh from a successful tour of Canada and the UK.

The exhibit is a “hands-on” educational display that demonstrates the importance and the power of stem cells, calling them “our body’s master cells.” It uses animations, touch-screen displays, videos and stunning images to engage the eyes and delight the brain.

Each of the four sections focuses on a different aspect of stem cell research, from basic explanations about what a stem cell is, to how they change and become all the different cells in our body. It has a mini laboratory so visitors can see how research is done; it even has a “treatment” game where you get to implant and grow cells in the eye, to see if you can restore sight to someone who is blind.

 

In a news release the Fleet Science Center celebrated the role that stem cells play in our lives:

“Stem cells are important because each of us is the result of only a handful of tiny stem cells that multiply to produce the 200 different types of specialized cells that exist in our body. Our stem cells continue to be active our whole lives to keep us healthy. Without them we couldn’t survive for more than three hours!”

It is, in short, really fun and really cool.

Of course we might be a tad biased here as we helped produce and develop the exhibit in collaboration with the Sherbrooke Museum of Science and Nature in Canada, the Canadian Stem Cell Network, the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine in Canada; the Cell Therapy Catapult in the UK, and EuroStemCell.

The exhibit is tri-lingual (English, Spanish and French) because our goal was to create a multi-lingual global public education program. San Diego was an obvious choice for the first stop on the California tour (with LA and the Bay Area to follow) because it is one of the leading stem cell research hubs in the U.S., and a region where CIRM has invested almost $380 million over the last ten years.

As our CIRM Board Chair, Jonathan Thomas, said:

“One of our goals at CIRM is to help spread awareness for the importance of stem cell research. San Diego is an epicenter of stem cell science and having this exhibition displayed at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center is a wonderful opportunity to engage curious science learners of all ages.”

The Super Cells exhibit runs from January 23 to May 1, 2016, in the Main Gallery of the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. The exhibition is included with the cost of Fleet admission.

For more information, visit the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center website.