The Bottom Line
Pros
- Visitors can touch and play with all the exhibits
- Fun, accessible and educational
Cons
- Limited opening hours
- Displays tend to get broken, so not every exhibit may be working
Description
- 5701 Normandale Road, Edina, MN 55424
Telephone 952-848-4848 - Located on the third floor of the Edina Community Center. The parking lot is to the left of the building.
- Limited opening hours: open on Saturday year-round, plus select days during the summer.
Guide Review - The Works Science and Technology Museum
Hidden away in Edina's Community Center, The Works is a technology museum with a mantra of "hands-on, minds-on" learning. It is packed with interesting, interactive exhibits that children can, and are encouraged to, touch, operate, and experiment with.
Unlike the larger, grander, and more famous Science Museum in St. Paul, The Works is housed in a small ex-office space. But it's packed with exhibits, and each one demonstrates a scientific principle in an elegant, accessible way, and explains how it is relevant in today's world.
Favorites include a "light harp" with no strings, played by optical sensors (the same that make a CD drive work, did you know?) a computer and camera to demonstrate how computer pictures work (you can make a hilarious squashed stretched photo of Dad to take home) and a room with more blocks and wheels and gears than your little scientist could have dreamed of. (Challenge - can you make a car that goes faster than your brother's? Bonus points for knocking his block tower down.)
Sometimes the displays are experimented with too vigorously and get broken, so not everything may be working when you visit. But there is so much to see here, that it shouldn't be too much a problem.
The Works hopes that their exhibits will interest children, help to demystify science and technology, and inspire confidence in learning about technology. They especially hope to connect with those traditionally underrepresented in the sciences, such as women, girls and people of color.
The Works's plan seems to be, well, working. The museum was busy with children were playing happily when we visited, proof that science can be interesting to everyone when it is accessible and not locked up in stuffy laboratories.
