Maybe you dislike math, but you like video games, or skateboarding, or art and design. If that’s the case, then Orlando Science Center aims to facilitate a whole new relationship between you and your least favorite subject through 2theXtreme!, which will demonstrate how math-related skills relate to just about everything you do or would like to do.
“This exhibition vividly demonstrates math’s impact and its role in shaping the world today and tomorrow,” says OSC vice president of marketing Jeff Stanford. “It does so through engaging, hands-on displays and activities that illustrate how math is essential to music, dance, sports, filmmaking, engineering and so much more.”
The 2theXtreme! installation will sprawl across more than 5,000 square feet of space at OSC with 40 interactive exhibits organized into six sections that cover math in adventure sports, the environment, style and design, entertainment, video games, and robotics and space.
Traveling for 12 years and continually updated, 2theXtreme! is produced by Evergreen Exhibitions in partnership with a Who’s Who of science and math organizations, including NASA, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Society of Professional Engineers.
And they mean for the exhibition to be fun. For example, jump onto a snowboard and learn about angles; build a skateboard that lets you select variables for the best tricks or design a skyscraper and evaluate its structural soundness.
You can also step onto a photo stage, capture your image in 360 degrees, and manipulate the playback; collect data as meteorologists might in a hurricane; and jump inside an online video game and defend yourself from computer bugs and viruses. “We hope this exhibit will help everyone better understand the need for math,” says Stanford, “and inspire young people to embrace it as a key to their future success.”
