Muskoka Discovery Centre’s newest exhibit “Shaping Watersheds Sandbox” has been specially created to encourage and teach youth and adults while using a combination of state-of-the-art technology and hands-on experiments.
Visitors to the Muskoka Discovery Centre are amazed with the “Shaping Watersheds Interactive Sandbox” exhibit as they can run their hands through real sand to form mountains, valleys, lakes and rivers.
“We were inspired by the design of AR Sandboxes by Oliver Kreylos, a computer scientist from UC Davis,” says Olivia Simpson, Educator at Muskoka Discovery Centre. “Our fabrication was done by our team from Muskoka Discovery Centre and Friends of Muskoka Watershed.”
The sandbox exhibit, demonstrates in living colour how water moves and interacts with the landscape to create watersheds. You can even hold your hand above the sand that will cast a shadow, causing blue virtual rain to fall from a virtual cloud. Depending on what you have designed in the sandbox, the rain would fall on the river and flow until a dam stopped it. Continue to create more amazing designs in the Augmented Reality Sandbox by simply draining the water and starting all over again.
“Water is a critical resource for all life on earth,” adds Olivia. “The dependency on healthy fresh water sources to the Muskoka region supports that this new exhibit is a perfect educational learning lab for all students and teachers in Muskoka and surrounding regions.”
It is a flexible education tool that can be used to explore the importance of water, hydrology, earth science and environmental studies. By use of hands-on manipulation it gives the user full control, which further reinforces the learning principles to challenges ongoing learning.
Open year round, guests are invited to come out and have some fun in our AR sandbox. Sandboxes are not just for playgrounds and kids. This new interactive exhibit brings hours of enjoyment to everyone between the ages of 1 and 101 as they bring watersheds to life through this exhibit.
Come Laugh, Learn, Explore, Discover at the Muskoka Discovery Centre, 275 Steamship Bay Road, Gravenhurst, Ontario P1P 1Z9
