Shanghai Wind Power Museum, the first of its kind in China,
opened to the public Tuesday at the gate of the Shanghai Binhai
Forest Park in coastal Nanhui District.
The museum is one of 40 science museums which have been planned
for 2010. It will be open to primary and middle school students as
extracurricular activity venues.
"The purpose of the museum is to simplify and demonstrate the
science theories in textbooks," Wang Jianping, an official in
charge of popular science development in Shanghai Science and
Technology Commission, said yesterday.
The two-story museum is made up of four exhibition halls
including wind-driven power generation and the relationship between
wind power and people.
The museum designers said the most innovative exhibit is a
three-dimensional projection screen - an interactive cartoon show
in which visitors can operate a virtual child to reach any part of
a mountain.
The screen will display the level of wind strength at different
spots of a mountain - similar to the way venues of wind power are
scientifically selected.
Additionally, various wind power machines are also exhibited,
including the oldest windmill in the early 14th century in Holland
and the state-of-the-art machines which are widely used today.
Visitors can also compare the energy of wind power to that of
riding exercise bicycles: the faster people ride a bicycle, the
more illumination appear inside the buildings in a background
setting. The screen also shows how much wind power is needed to
achieve the same illumination.
"We want to give visitors, particularly children, a very direct
experience of energy despite its forms," said Hu Xuezeng, a chief
designer of the museum.
(Shanghai Daily March 30, 2006)
