Explore Unexpected Science Behind Bicycling At Exploratorium

Funded by a grant from Amgen, the Exploratorium will join the Amgen Tour of California’s Lifestyle Festival at each of the race’s finish cities (Santa Rosa/February 18, Sacramento/February 19, San Jose/February 20, San Luis Obispo/February 21, Time Trial/February 22, Santa Clarita/February 23, Pasadena/February 24), and provide exhibits and demonstrations to attendees for free.

“Amgen is thrilled to have The Exploratorium join us this year at the Amgen Tour of California,” said Jean Lim, director, Amgen director of corporate contributions. “As a biotechnology company that develops innovative and vital medicines to help millions of patients fight serious disease, it is important to us to demonstrate how science works."

The Exploratorium booth will include demonstrations and activities for all ages that show just how hard a pumping heart works, how to measure lung capacity, how much electricity pedaling a bike generates, and how to extract and study DNA. The public can also learn more about the science of cycling at www.exploratorium.edu/cycling.

This is the second year that Amgen has provided a grant to fund the Exploratorium’s participation in the Amgen Tour of California Lifestyle Festival. Among the exhibits and demonstrations from the Exploratorium to be featured at the Lifestyle Festival is Tennis Ball Squeeze, where you’ll learn that the effort it takes to squeeze a tennis ball is about the same as your heart muscle exerts every time it beats. Try squeezing a tennis ball 60x a minute and feel the burn -- and that’s for a resting heart. Imagine if you’d just done a bicycle tour and were pumping at 120x a minute. Take care of that heart. And your hand will hurt.

At the DNA demo, help extract DNA from wheat germ by breaking down its cellular structure. This is the coding that gives instructions for the proteins that it takes to be you. Then play with model amino acids to construct some of those proteins in 3-D.

Or visualize your lung capacity by exhaling through a tube to displace water for an accurate measure of your breathing power. Want to know more about what’s inside? Examine the structures and features of your heart and joints by watching dissections of pig hearts and chicken legs.

Among the exhibits available for play include:

Pedal Generator takes pedaling to a new level -- transforming your efforts into electricity and dramatically demonstrating the amount of work or energy it takes to create electrical power. Sit and pedal, this time not to go anywhere, but to crank an electric generator through a crankshaft. In front of you are three headlight lamps, two current meters, and a set of switches to turn on either one or all of the lamps, or none at all. Like first gear, it’s easy to pedal and crank the generator when no lights are on. With one lamp turned on, the pedaling becomes surprisingly difficult and a good amount of effort must be put into lighting the lamp. This provides a physical example of the large amount of work required to produce enough electricity for just one lamp. With that basic green message, try it with three lamps on. You’ll have to pedal furiously to try to keep the three lamps at the same brilliance (in electrical terms, identical current in and out) as the original single lamp.

Bicycle Legs is a mechanical representation of human legs pedaling a bicycle. Each leg is powered by two air cylinders, which represent the two major leg muscles. Visitors can activate each of the four cylinders separately. By carefully timing the activation of the cylinders, it is possible to get the legs to pedal the bike. With a little practice, visitors can get the legs pumping by using only two of the air cylinder "muscles." -- www.exploratorium.edu