On April 15 2023, Flat Bobby and Flat Nelly decided to travel to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. The Liberty Science Center is an interesting museum for kids with lots of things to see and touch. There was one special exhibit in particular that they were looking forward to.
The first exhibit they stopped at was a special room covered in a big net. Inside the room were hundreds of monarch butterflies. Flat Bobby and Flat Nelly were given a cotton swab (also known as a Q-Tip) which had been dipped in sugary water. The butterflies loved the sugar water and would climb onto the Q-Tip! One of the butterflies climbed onto Flat Nelly’s leg and did not want to let go. We think that butterfly wanted to come home with us to eat popcorn and watch Moana.
After hanging out with the butterflies, Flat Bobby and Flat Nelly went to the Thomas & Friends exhibit where they got to take turns in the ticket booth, moving luggage and being the conductor.
Next, Flat Bobby and Flat Nelly played in the Infinity Climber, a special playground that is suspended from the ceiling. It felt like they were playing in midair! Seeing them run around in a playground hanging in the middle of the air made Aunt Davia and Uncle Rich a little nervous.
Another part of the Liberty Science Center was an aquarium with lots of fish and aquatic life. Flat Bobby and Flat Nelly had fun looking at the turtles. Did you know that Uncle Rich and Aunt Lauren used to have turtles as pets when they were growing up? Their names were Thunder and Lightning.
After that, Flat Bobby and Flat Nelly went to the main attraction: the Pompeii Exhibit. Pompeii was a city in Italy that was covered in ash when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in the year 79. This special exhibit contained real artifacts that archeologists had dug up from the ground where Pompeii used to exist.
The first part of the Pompeii exhibit was a scary movie that showed what it was like to be in Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. One moment it was peaceful and calm, and in the next moment tons of lava was shooting into the air and the landscape became covered in hot ash.
One of the artifacts was a real bath they found at Pompeii. This bath was made of solid bronze. Flat Bobby and Flat Nelly wanted to take a bath but the sign in front of it said “Please Don’t Touch”! We wondered if you might have been able to survive Pompeii if you had held your breath under the water of the bath… but we decided you probably would not have made it.
One of our favorite exhibits was the bread! More specifically, the sign in front said it was “Quality Bread.” However, we all decided the bread did not look very appetizing. Uncle Rich was afraid he would chip a tooth if he tried to bite into that 2,000 year-old bread. There were about thirty different bakeries in Pompeii, and most of the time the bread was cut into eight pieces like a pizza.
One of the weirdest artifacts was this thing. It looks like a typical clay pot with some holes in it, but was a special pot for keeping a specific type of rodent. These mice were specifically kept to be eaten!
Aunt Davia said she would prefer to eat the black bread rather than a dormouse.
This was the creepiest part of the Pompeii exhibit. These are “casts” of people and a sheep that were found in Pompeii. After the remains of a person (or sheep) was found, an archaeologist would pour plaster around the remains, which would create these forms that we saw in this exhibit.
This shows how these casts would be made. The Pompeii victim would have been covered by several feet of hardened ash before they were discovered. Then their remains would be covered in plaster. The plaster would harden like concrete, and then it could be dug up and removed.
Before we left, we decided to stop for some Dippin’ Dots! This is an interesting form of ice cream with a unique texture. Flat Bobby got the Cookies & Cream flavor and Flat Nelly got the Rainbow flavor. This was everyone’s favorite part of the trip.
After that sweet end to the trip, Flat Bobby, Flat Nelly, Aunt Davia and Uncle Rich drove back to New York City where we made some popcorn, watched a movie, and played some Minecraft.
