Franklin Institute

I'm snooty about science museums, and I thought the Franklin Institute was great.  This giant heart, for example.  You can walk all around inside it, following the path that blood takes through various atria and ventricles and the lungs and so on.  I think Dale is in the main pulmonary artery.

Jordan would not go in because the heart was full of loud heart sounds, whoosh-whoosh, lub-dub, and that was too scary.  He's against loud noises right now.  That actually ruled out a lot of the museum for him -- most of it was very Exciting and Modern and that meant loud noises.  Had we known, we might have spent more time with the historic Franklin artifacts; they don't have so many sound effects.

The hall surrounding the Giant Heart is full of pretty interesting exhibits about cardiology.  Aaron does a bang-up imitation of a blood cell.  He still flows easily through the plaque-filled artery on the right.

There was also a totally fascinating video of heart surgery, life-size, with the screen set in the chest of a mannequin on an operating table.  The guy was even surrounded by a faux OR, with all the right tools and machines.  Not for the squeamish.  But Jordan and I watched for a while.  (That was not loud.)

Jordan enjoyed the Bernoulli thingy better, where you can make the bottle stay up in the air with a blower.