Explorit: From agriculture to art, changes are coming

This weekend is your last chance to catch Exploit’s “Beyond the Table” exhibition. Be sure to come check it out before it’s gone. So if an agricultural adventure is what you seek, this weekend Explorit is the place for you.

Try your hand at grinding flour from rice with a Native American mortar and pestle while experiencing the history of milling. Or become a drop of water and travel through the water cycle, discovering how farmers get the water they need for their crops.

Have you ever seen what goats eat on a farm? Or cattle? Have you smelled it? Felt it? This weekend you can do all that and examine different animal feeds under a high-powered microscope.

If you’ve ever wondered why different fertilizers are better for different kinds of plants, how much sugar is in your favorite beverage, or how baby spiders run away from home, now is your chance to find out. Join us for one last chance to pretend to be a migratory water bird scavenging for food in a farmer’s flooded field or get your hands a little dirty experimenting with how well different types of soil retain water for crops.

Plus, for “Beyond the Table’s” last weekend, we’ll be having workshops Saturday and Sunday afternoon on crop-dusting airplanes. Find out what small aircraft can do for a farm and make a plane to take home, free with paid admission to the museum.

But although “Beyond the Table” is closing soon, our next exhibition, “Beautiful World: Science and Art,” will open on March 25 just in time for spring break. Discover the artistry in the natural world all around us from sound waves to the colors of light to the symmetry of a leaf.

Explore with us as we seek the places where art and science intersect. How could a painter use gravity? How do physics affect a sculptor’s work? We’ll dive into these and other branches of art and their relationships with science.

“Beautiful World” also will feature opportunities for visitors to create and share their own works of art, as well as investigate the science that makes those works of art possible.

So join us this weekend to say goodbye to “Beyond the Table,” but plan to come see us again this spring to check out “Beautiful World: Science and Art” starting March 25.

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Explorit’s coming events:

* Football and Farm Tools February: Each weekend in February from 1 to 5 p.m., Explorit has been featuring a special football or farm-themed activity for visitors, free with paid admission to the museum. On Saturday and Sunday, visitors will be invited to make a crop-dusting airplane

* Sunday, Feb. 24 is the last day of Explorit’s “Beyond the Table: Agriculture and You” exhibitition. The exhibit hall will be closed from Sunday to March 24 to allow installation of the next exhibition.

* Explorit will be open for spring break, March 25-April 7 from 1 to 5 p.m. with the debut of our new “Beautiful World: Science and Art” exhibition.

— Explorit Science Center is at 3141 Fifth St. For more information, call 530-756-0191 or visit www.explorit.org. You can also “like” Explorit on Facebook at www.facebook.com/explorit.fb or follow on Twitter at @ExploritScience