Measurement Rules comes to the Cade Museum

Press release from the Cade Museum

How many chickens do you weigh? How tall are you in apples or inches or pennies?  Can you use your foot as a ruler?  The answers to these and other questions can be explored at Measurement Rules, an interactive exhibit at the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention on display from September 19, 2021 to January 2, 2022.

It might be common to measure using standard tools such as measuring tapes and vessels, but the Measurement exhibit will explore some nonstandard ones such as balancing scales, odometers, calipers, 3-D imaging, and counting “Mississippis.”

“We’ve designed this exhibit to enable kids to work together and become more confident in the language of measurement,” explains Anne Fullenkamp, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh’s Director of Design.

Measurement Rules was created by Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and locally sponsored by Visit Gainesville, Alachua County, and CAMPUS USA Credit Union.

You can explore concepts of length, time, volume, and weight in a variety of ways:

LENGTH

• Height Wall – How tall are you in apples or pennies?
• Treadmill Odometer – Get walking and add to the total yards we’ll calculate visitors walked on our treadmill in the exhibit.
• Ball Gauges – Tinker with instruments such as calipers, height gauges, and go/no-go gauges. Explore all of the possible ways to measure an ordinary wooden ball.  Toss the balls down the chutes to test your findings.
• Giant Tape Measure – Extend a giant tape measure to measure the equally giant fish on our wall mural.
• Foot Ruler – Fit your foot into the gauge to make your foot a unit of measurement then measure yourself in your “feet” and other people’s “feet.”

TIME

• Five Mississippi – How good is your internal clock? Count to five Mississippi and see how close you come to five actual seconds.
• Ball Stopwatch – Build your own ball ramp and make it faster or slower with modifications.

VOLUME

• See Your Volume – Step before the screen and see yourself built from cubic-inch blocks.
• Bead Table – Little ones can explore volume at an open-ended bead play table.

WEIGHT

• Chicken Scale – Find out how many chickens you weigh.
• Balance Scale – Finesse the right balance between objects and standard weights on a large balance scale.

“At the Cade Museum we believe that anyone can be a problem solver, a builder of new things, an inventor—they just need to develop the right mindset,” says Stephanie Bailes, Cade Museum President and Executive Director. “We are thrilled to bring Measurement Rules to our community because it encourages visitors to think outside the box and see mass, weight, and length in new ways. Thinking creatively about the ways in which we measure our world helps develop that inventive mindset and fuels the innovators in all of us. With the coming fourth industrial revolution, our children and communities need this mindset now more than ever.”

About the Cade Museum

The Cade Museum’s mission is to transform communities by inspiring and equipping future inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. In 2004, Dr. James Robert Cade and his family established the Cade Museum Foundation to build the Cade Museum for Creativity & Invention in Gainesville, Florida. Dr. Cade, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of Florida, was best known as the lead inventor of Gatorade in 1965. An independent 501(c)(3) public foundation, the museum receives no operational funding from federal, state, or local governments, or the University of Florida.

Hours of Operation: Thursday-Friday, 12pm-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, 10am-5pm

Location: 811 S. Main, Gainesville, FL 32601

Visit CadeMuseum.org for more information.

About Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh

Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is a place that delights and inspires children, where they can take off on fantastic flights of imagination daily, and return to earth to splash in a river, hammer a nail and ink a silkscreen. With 80,000 square feet of space the Museum welcomes more than 302,500 visitors annually and provides tons of fun and loads of “real stuff” experiences for play and learning. Permanent hands-on, interactive exhibit areas at the Museum include The Studio, Theater, Waterplay, Attic, Nursery, Backyard and MAKESHOP®. The Museum’s award-winning, three-story, center building is screened by a shimmering wind Sculpture and connects two historic structures (Allegheny Post Office Building & the Buhl Building). In 2006 the Museum became a certified green building and was honored by the American Institute for Architects and the National Historic Preservation Trust. In 2015 Parents Magazine named the Museum one of the nation’s fifteen top children’s museums .and in 2017 the Children’s Museum was Voted One of the Nation’s Ten Best Museums for Families inUSA Today 10Best Reader’s Choice Contest for Best Museum for Families in America.