Irfan Goes To Petrosains

We all went for a trip to Petrosains Discovery Centre located at the fourth level of Suria KLCC today for the first time.

It was quite an informative and entertaining jaunt with a lot of interactive scientific experiments that children can participate in. There was even a Science Show where kids (well, one kid from the audience) participated in. There was even a short 3D film in a small theatre they had. It was quite an elaborate set-up and it took us three hours and forty minutes to complete the entire circuit.

I tweeted bits and pieces of our visit to Petrosains with photos. You could sift through the timestamped tweets here to the posts in question. But I thought this blog post would be a great way to consolidate all the posts (with photos) and insert untweeted photos as well. We started off in a ride through a dark tunnel which took us to imaginative displays to introduce science and nature to the visitor.

But writing about the visit does not do it justice. You just have to bring your family and friends there to enjoy the whole experience.

Here are photos from today’s excursion.

Petrosains’ entrance from within the Suria KLCC mall.

Plasma tube sent crackles of electrical energy to Irfan’s hand who then powers a fluorescent tube by holding it.

Blue + Red + Yellow = a plastic flower shadow.

Large lenses helped create a hologram-like image, which Irfan tries to grab in vain.

An animatronic dinosaur eyes three tasty morsels in front of it.

The weird thing about this Tyrannosaurus was that it rapped in two languages.

Another weird thing is that I knew that the prehistoric mammal was a platybelodon by sight.

This smilodon did not sound at all like Dennis Leary.

I thought of running a MiniSix game at one point but all the dice they had were too big.

A FLIR camera showed us our heat signatures, which was a bit better looking than our regular signatures.

At the Science Show, things got burned, water was absorbed, balloons were blown and Coke bottles exploded.

Ain interacted with virtual falling particles with her shadow. On the other wall, one can also get a swarm of virtual butterflies to stop and perch on your shadow.

We took a helicopter simulator to the oil rig section of the exhibits. (Well, the whole thing was funded by OCP… er, I mean Petronas.) The helicopter looked fake, but the livery was made to resemble something familiar. Even as the simulator began, the big screen showed me the very familiar taxiway of a very familiar heliport, a heliport from which a mot – ++++ CONNECTION LOST FOR IMPENDING IMPROPER TIRADE ++++

The oil platform setup reminds me of the colony on LV-426.

We explored the living quarters exhibit where Irfan finds a bunk.

We came to a section where there were plenty of experiments on speed and velocity. There were gear to even measure the speed of our karate chop and the height of our jumps.

Irfan tried out the go-kart simulator that has hydraulic gimbals which allowed visitor to really feel tight turns and crashes right down to their teeth.

Before we left, I saw a window and took a photo of the KLCC courtyard before Jalan Ampang. Leaving required us to take another ride through the dark tunnel which took us through space and blacklight caused Irfan’s shirt to glow eerily luminescent.

Then we got off the ride and found ourselves in a gift shop. Sadly, to play around with the science experiments here you had to buy and take them home with you.