Franklin Institute has a traveling exhibit called Identity.
Explore how the physical, psychological and social elements in your life create Identity: An Exhibition of You. This unique exhibit takes the science behind identity and makes it personal, engaging you and your students with hands-on interactive components that challenge us all to see ourselves from a different perspective.
Identity is divided into three areas. Explore the extent to which inherited genes determine our physical identity. Observe how chemical balances in the brain affect our psychological identity. Evaluate how the people around us modify our social identity. Students can compare their fingerprints, measure whether they are introverted or extroverted, and rethink the ways they interact and identify with particular social groups. Take another look at yourself at Identity…you might be surprised by what you see. (website)
Identity made a stop at Atlantic city’s Trump Plaza so we had to check it out!
Identity is a journey of you. Why are you the way you are. What makes you alike, or different from other people. While most physical differences are very apparent there are so many others that are not skin deep. More to the point differences in humans are brain deep. Identity explores three main areas of YOU, social, physical, and psychological.
Psychological:
The exhibit shows you how a fetus brain develops, and the differences that happen between male and female brains. Another interactive exhibit shows you how different people handle stress related activity. You can even learn what areas of the brain are responsible for different activities like dancing, singing, and the way we talk.
Our personality is based on the way our brain functions and its’ unique chemistry.
Differences in our brain chemistry, brain structures and brain activity impact our environment.
There are differences between male and female brains, but there are overlaps as well.
Embrace the unique way in which you think!
In this exhibit you had to squeeze each tube and smell. Depending on how you rated the smell between pleasant and unpleasant you could learn about your creative side!
Are you a traditionalist, or an innovator? Do you like to try new things? This reminded me of perfume. I can tell you I disliked most of the smells, while my “crazy” friend Nicki liked most of them. So did my son, and I realized that I am way more of a traditionalist then they are.
Socially:
How do people influence my identity?
People help shape our identity. We classify others and ourselves into groups, sometimes these classifications make sense, other times they can be misleading. No person is an island, appreciate the impact other people have on your identity.
There was large floor and when you entered a colored orb formed below you. As you walked around, and near people, your orb took a little bit of color from other orbs. It showed that you could take away something from each person you meet.
Physical:
How do genes impact my body?
Most of our physical identity is determined by our genes.
Our genes are inherited.
Our genes don’t determine everything about our physical identity, environment also has a role.
Don’t fear, but love your genes, they are the starting point to our unique identity!
Do you look like your mom, or dad, or both. Can you be siblings and look nothing alike? Of course, the answers lie in our genetic makeup. Since we get 23 genes from mom and 23 from dad its really left up to chance which ones get passes along to you and which ones do not. You could be tall like dad or short like mom. Or maybe you’re tall like Uncle Mike because one of your parents carries a tall gene even though they are not tall themselves.
In this kiosk you were given 4 sets of parents, and 8 children cards. You needed to match the children up to their biological parents. You did this solely on looks alone. I didn’t get any of the children correct. I didn’t even get the children paired correctly as siblings.
My kids favorite part was a facial recognition kiosk. There was a computer that took a photo of your face. After your photo was placed up on the screen you make some minor adjustments using the mouse. Then you got to explore what you would look like if you were male, female, Asian, African American, etc. The kids loved this, they thought is was so cool to see themselves in such a different way.
Identity is a traveling exhibit from the Franklin Institute. Its in Atlantic city for only a short time.
May 26th- September 3rd
The exhibit is open noon-7pm daily and tickets are $14.05.
This exhibit is appropriate for older children. My 7 and 9 year old enjoyed it, however everything was lost on my 3 year old.
