Solving Mysteries with Pacific Science Center

Editor's Note: Pacific Science Center has a number of fascinating seminars, workshops, and live demonstrations planned for the upcoming Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. To help develop one of our demonstrations, our crew recently hit the road to try it out on a young audience. The following account from Sarah Crouse, our Curriculum Project Supervisor gives you an idea of just some of what's planned this fall.

"Eeew! What is that? Zombie hearts?! Lice Ant Eyeballs? No, raspberry tarts gone bad!"

These were questions and explanations called out from the audience recently at St. Thomas Church's vacation bible camp. The energetic dialogue was regarding a glass jar with gross looking unidentified contents. The jar had been unveiled during an interactive demonstration on archaeology presented by Pacific Science Center.

In this engaging demonstration, Mystery of the Lice Ant, an "amateur archaeologist" with the help of the audience sets out to solve an urban legend regarding mythical Lice Ants. By using the tools of archaeology to guide them, the amateur archaeologist and the audience work together to discover the answers to this puzzling story.

The demonstration along with many other educational programs was developed in conjunction with the upcoming Pacific Science Center exhibit, Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls which opens September 23, 2006. Since the demonstration will be presented daily during the exhibit, visitors will have an opportunity to unravel this mystery for themselves!

For more information about Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls, visit www.pacificsciencecenter.org/dss