King Tut wants YOU! (king-tut.org)

If you’re a rare Penn student who finds yourself swimming in free time this week rather than midterms, head to the Franklin Institute. Built to satisfy the kindergartener within all of us, all the science exhibits are meant to the explored, deciphered, walked through, jumped into, and absorbed hands on.

Start the trip with a run inside the giant heart . It’s four hulking tons of plaster and paper mache, installed with a sound and lighting system to simulate the voyage of blood through the human heart. The two-story blow-up replica is scaled for a body as large as the Statue of Liberty. Pretend to be a blood platelet or a cholesterol-carrying lipoprotein as you amble through the winding corridors. Peer down a tricuspid valve or step into some carotid muscle pulsating with red and blue light.

Tired of those biology midterms? Skip over and get a handle on the real stuff. Want to learn physics? Sit in the cockpit of a jet, or strap on wings and experience the Bernoulli effect firsthand. Walk into the coal room of an enormous 350-ton locomotive. And don’t forget to pay your respects to a 20 foot tall replica of the father of all things good, Ben Franklin, whose national memorial sits in the opening rotunda.

This enormous playground dedicated to Franklin now plays temporary home to artifacts from King Tut’s tomb. The exhibit, officially dubbed “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” runs at the Franklin Institute until September and promises to be a lavish affair with all the commercial flair of Disneyworld. The local cafe is selling Tut cheesecake, a Tut trolley transports tourists about town, and the final exhibit leads straight to the gift shop. Tut is one large marketing blitz.

And, of course, plan to encounter long lines. Fortunately, the exhibit is well-worth the price of admission. Philadelphia is the last stop on the tour for these artifacts, which first appeared three decades ago on the cover of National Geographic . In spite of the EPCOT vibes, this exhibit isn’t as kid friendly as the rest of the museum. Yet it’s an amazing gem of curatorial genius.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.