Go visit a Science Center

[ztirffritz]

This weekend my son and I went to Portland and McMinnville Or to visit several museums. We started at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville. While there, I purchased a Family+ membership. The memberships are all 20% off through February and it provides access to 300+ STEM attractions worldwide. In the Northwest, this includes the Pacific Science Center (Seattle), Boeing Museum of Flight(Seattle), OMSI (Portland), Evergreen Aviation Museum (McMinnville) and The Reach (Hanford WA) among many others. This alone was enough of a deal to make it worth it for me. I thought others with children might also be interested. I purchased my membership through the Evergreen Aviation Museum, but check your local museums to see if they're listed at the ASTC Passport program here:

http://www.astc.org/passport/?country=United+States&state=WA&keywords=

Membership prices vary from museum to museum, but the passport benefits appear to be the same for all the participating museums.

[cbelt3]

That's VERY cool. Thank you for sharing it !

[The UnDoug]

That's a great program! For years, we had a membership in Philadelphia's "Franklin Institute" (named for Ben Franklin). Any time we'd be visiting other cities and states on vacation, we'd always check to see if there were museums/centers/etc. to which we'd get reciprocal benefits. There were many!

[Racer X]

The Hanford REACH musuem (actually in Richland) is a cool place. We were there 2 years ago, and had the place to ourselves. There was a Docent, and someone manning the desk/gift area. So the Docent, obviously a retired engineer from Hanford/DOE or Battelle, became our personal guide. My mom's family is from Richland, many still live there. And my partner's dad helped with the welding of the reactors there.

So our personal connection brought it to life.

[ztirffritz]

We had a machinist out our plant who did 'hot work' at Hanford for a while. He said it was REALLY boring. He'd work for about 15 minutes then take 30days off. Actually he still had to go to work, but he had to be in isolation because he was too radioactive. He'd play cards with the other machinists for the next 4 weeks until his next 15 minute shift.

[Racer X]

Yeah, "Pops" had limited exposure hours too. He was one of the union shop stewards at the time and really held their feet to the fire about safety issues out there (and everywhere).

One time he was uncapping an old pipe, and the marbles came cascading out. He came unglued that they were working hot piping without being told, or suited up. He checked everything himself after that.