Hillbillies in the forum

“or desert, depending on where you hike”

“or a biz woods?”

“Exhibit Engineer: One who designs, builds, and maintains exhibits for a hands-on science center. I build and play with cool things like electro-magnetic rail guns with laser sites and a tornado machine that can put an unsharpened pencil through a 6x6 block of wood. We also have built non-destructive machines such as a 200mph bicycle (Yes, I'm serious) and remote operated submarines that cost $15,000 a piece. Most of the things we build we build them for kids to play with so they have to be very safe and very very strong.”

“Cool. You can certainly be proud of that. Except the unsharpened pencil that goes through thick wood, of course.”

“Apparently I should introduce myself too, since I grew up in eastern Ky, on the W Va, Va. border. That pretty much qualifies me as a hillbilly as well (Anyone ever see the HBO documentary? I grew up in that area). I've watched the site for a little while and posted once or twice, but never really said hi before, and didn't want to start a new thread to do so.”

“Oh no, I love the tornado machine. The kids love it too (one gets to take the wood with the pencil in it home). We use it in a show about the weather. It has a peice of plex 2" thick for the kids to view and a 1" thick iron plate to stop the pencil. Unlike the rail gun it is a closed unmoveable system. And like the rail gun, only our professional staff operates those exhibits during a show. So far we've only had one accident in our center.

We had another staff-operated show exhibit called "The exploding wire." What this exhibit did was send 15,000 volts through a very small guage wire. This caused the wire to heat up and explode into a million pieces. It was pretty cool. However, the staff member doing the show didn't follow safety procedures. Mistake one: He was standing in water (from a bottle rocket that is fired over the audience at the beginning of the show). Mistake two: He leaned agains the kiosk housing the exploding wire instead of standing ten feet away (the fire button has a moveable cord that could stretch 15 feet). Needless to say the power jumped from the wire through his body to the floor.

Two guests hit him with a nearby board to break him free from the hold the electricity had on his body. He was in the hospital for a day and still works with us. However, after his accident, even though it was his fault, all the actors were afraid of it so we had to warehouse it.”

“Sounds like you're molding young minds for warfare. Do you have any passive displays????

I remember being impressed by plate techtonics when I was a kid not high velocity projectiles, large voltage and exploding wire. So, you're funded by the DOD?”

“Yeah... I can see why they might, <VBG>


Hi Stickman. Welcome to the asylum. After seeing the Warm Welcome some folks get, I didn't start a 'hello thread' when I got here either, LOL. I just started slipping in one-liners here and there and slowly materialised.

We also have a StickMON who is a regular here... some Rasta Thing I guess (who knew?).”

“The Stickman deal comes from the fact that I'm 6'2' and about 150 (yes, pounds, not ounces. I know what you all were going to ask). When I was a city cop some fatso on the second day of police academy looked at me and said "he's so skinny he looks like a stickman" and I haven't been able to lose the name since, even though I've switched jobs and gained a whopping 13 pounds or so.”

“Actually, the exhibits I mentioned are 3 years old--we had them on display before the war. We don't have very many "passive" displays since we are a "hands-on science center" and that is what the public wants us to be. Our old building had more museum type exhibits but when we moved to a bigger building the public wanted us to get rid of them and add more hands-on exhibits. So we have about 500 interactive exhibits--a few of which shoot projectiles, go boom, or make a lot of noise. The public has told us they want more of them--if we add more museum type exhibits they won't be willing to pay the admission--besides if they wanted to see that kind of stuff they could go to the art museum.

We just built three new exhibits which are very cool. One is a laser-harp. It's a harp which uses lasers instead of strings. There is one button on the exhibit that lets the kids choose from six different sounds. Arnold Schwarzenegger(sp) visited us about a month ago and he played with that exhibit and liked it. Another new exhibit has a clear glass tube about 3 feet long 2" in diameter filled 1/4 of the way with bean-bag filling. On one side of the tube there is a speaker. You press the button on the exhibit to start it and turn a knob changing the frequency of the sound--the tube and speaker makes the bean-bag filling stand up to match the frequency--very cool. The final exhibit we just built is a drum connected to a heart beat monitor. You grab the monitor with your hands and everytime your heart beats a motor in the drum beats the drum.

Another noteable somewhat "passive" exhibit is our high wire unicycle. We have a unicycle with a 250lbs weight hanging off the bottom of it suspended 17 feet in the air over our main entrance. It's something else to ride a unicycle on a wire 2" wide 17 feet in the air.”

“let the troll pounding begin...LOL...

Couldn'ta picked a different handle...could ya?

oh well, welcome!!!”