Eli Whitney Museum

Build a remarkable drawing machine from 1913 adapted by Senior Apprentice Angus Macmullen and Educator Josh Revkin. Since their first adaptation, it's been revised three more times. We will teach you some ways to program it. Then you will go on to invent your own programs. The possibilities are infinite. Add color and shadows.

A basic vocabulary of movements controls every mechanical device. Leonardo daVinci identified and drew the most important of these. Learn one of three classic arrangements to control the direction, speed and shape of movement. Invent an artful application for your device. Then, connect yours to someone else's machine and let them work together with a set or series of pulleys to combine movement and meaning.

Create your own world of Minecraft in three dimensions with our building blocks and glue. Make a character you choose (Steve? Creeper? Enderman?) to keep you company you when you're playing online.

Common Sense Media rates Minecraft as a game for 8 years old and up.

Marbles have amused and educated children’s hands for thousands of years. These spheres of stone, clay and glass invite play and experiment. Leonardo, Galileo, Newton and Ada Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace, used marbles to explain how the world works.

Build a robot, add a motor and an eccentric wheel (or heart or star), a battery and wire it up. Your robot will dance and vibrate to any tune you call. Build a traditional robot, a Stormtrooper a Supergirl or maybe even Silver Surfer robot. You get to choose.

Looking at wave forms at different speeds and the effect of weight, air friction and gravity. As the speed changes, see the different number of waves traveling around the edge of the cloth.

Or, just enjoy the sheer pleasure of watching a dancer twirl about, a spaceship spin, Elsa or Olaf skate on ice, or Dervishes spin and spin and spin.

All creatures live in a web of resources that support or suppress their growth. Create a dynamic model of an insect’s or bird’s world. Suspend a magnetized creature on a pendulum. Add food and shelter (with magnets) that attract the creature and predators and hazards that repel it. The creature navigates a complex and fascinating path.

A battery's current flows in one direction. Clever arrangement of switches can reverse that direction. Construct a controller with a battery, motor and ultralight buggy which can go forward or backward. Learn wiring logic, precision, and trouble shooting.

Build a castle tower to protect your gold.

Ahoy There Matey!

The Circus explores the art and science of balance, forces, center or gravity and performance. Conceived with a nod to artist /engineer Sandy Calder, each circus tests classic experiments at work.

Expands STC curriculum.

Start with a chassis. Add wheels, a motor and a controller. They all look alike. But then you add your own touches. Make it a truck, a car, a go-cart, a van.

Then drive it forward and backward. Turn it left and right with a reversing switch you've built. And have a ball.

For 8 year olds and up.

Fifty years ago, a remarkable epic began. The Starship Enterprise and her crew began to explore Space…the Final Frontier. Unlike many explorers, her mission sought neither conquest nor treasure. Her crew sought out unknown civilizations across the galaxy. A Prime Directive promised that no starship would interfere with the development of any civilization it encountered. The challenge and wisdom of that law shaped the Enterprise's many adventures and accounts for her ongoing respect and fame. Construct and captain a model Enterprise Class starship.