Welcome back to Have Geeklets, Will Travel, a summer travel series that will help you think up cool travel plans that will appeal to both kids and adults. From geocaching expeditions in your backyard to factory tours in far-flung states, we’ll be providing ideas all summer long to get you out of your house and on the road for great adventures.
MoMath, or the Museum of Mathematics, opened in New York in December 2012, becoming the only museum in America dedicated solely to numbers (prior to its inception, there was another math museum — the Goudreau, which closed in 2006 — also in New York). Prior to the creation of the building and its numerous permanent exhibits, MoMath was on the road, bringing its square-wheeled tricycles and other math midway-inspired games to science centers.
If you’re lucky enough to be in New York, you can visit the museum itself and play with numbers. Hands-on exhibits teach concepts such as fractions, dimensionality, and geometry, making math interesting for everyone from kindergarteners to adults alike. If you don’t live in New York, you still have a chance to try out many of the math games as they crisscross the country in a traveling exhibit called Math Midway. We were fortunate that it came to our local science center prior to the opening of the museum, and the kids loved walking the maze (never making a left turn!), playing with the harmonograph, and trying to figure out the organ function grinder.
The exhibit is currently in Redding, California, though it will be in Denver and Rochester later this year. You can check out the schedule of Math Midway on their site and see if it’s coming near you. Additionally, the museum offers out an affordable Math Midway 2 Go for schools and community centers. And for those who can’t visit the hands-on exhibits at all, there are still plenty of materials on the site itself that can be brought into schools or completed at home in order to bring about a love of math.
Have you been yet to the Museum of Mathematics or gotten to experience the touring exhibit?
