Related Exhibits for Body Systems

Science and health content: Heart valves and chambers. Electricity makes your heart beat. 
The steady “lub-dub” of a beating heart is a universally reassuring sound, but what does it mean? After inserting a Peak Pass at one of two stations, the visitor grabs the handles at this exhibit component with both hands. The visitor’s heart rate displays onscreen both as an EKG and in beats per minute, in sync with a scientific animation of a beating heart.

Science and health content: Your heart is a muscle. Exercise your heart.
After inserting his or her Peak Pass, the visitor pedals a virtual-reality stationary bike along a simulated mountain trail. Onscreen, the visitor’s heart rate is displayed with his or her target heart rate (determined by age and gender from the Peak Pass database).

Science and health content: Vasculature. Blood vessels transport nutrients.
A noninvasive system employs near-infrared light to project a real-time image of the blood vessels of the forearm onto the surface of the arm itself. Visitors see their own blood flowing through their veins!

Science and health content : Cold changes your body. Help your body protect itself.
Your body protects its vital organs from cold with amazing involuntary reactions: goose bumps, shivering, and vasoconstriction. To experience these reactions and document the effect of wind chill on body temperature, the visitor places a hand in a “cold box” that generates a chilly wind. The visitor then compares the rate of dropping skin temperatures on the side of the hand in the wind to the one not in the wind—with dramatic results.

Science and health content: Kidneys concentrate blood at altitude. Stay hydrated.
Visitors compare two containers filled with liquid representing the volume of urine produced during a normal day in Denver and during a day spent climbing Mount Evans. A video describes the phenomenon, called diuresis that concentrates your red blood cells and increases your urine output over the first day or so at altitude.

Science and health content: Human body systems. Know your anatomy.
See yourself in a whole new way! The full-body viewer allows visitors of all ages to visualize what’s beneath their skin while providing meaningful comparative anatomy experiences. The visitor can select four different body systems (bones; nerves and glands; heart, vessels and lungs; muscles), which continue to move in sync with the visitor.

Science and health content: Genetics, age, and environment influence body size.
After swiping the Peak Pass, visitors spread their arms wide to have their height and reach captured on video and displayed real-time on a large video monitor. The visitor’s height and arm span data are plotted on a graph and displayed onscreen at a computer kiosk.

Science and health content: Digestion. Nutrient absorption.
What happens to the food you eat? From the esophagus through the rectum, visitors trace the fascinating progress of a granola bar as it goes on an expedition of its own through the human digestive system.

Science and health content: Bone growth and osteoporosis.
Interpretive panels with X-rays of bones at various ages show how bones change as people mature, and illustrate the way body proportions change over a lifetime.

Science and health content: How the brain interprets input from the senses. Practice improves performance.
In this interactive, visitors are challenged to cross a low-lying “log” over a virtual stream.

Science and health content: Muscle form and function. Exercise your muscles.
Visitors attempt to make their way along a shallow ledge at the bottom of a horizontal climbing wall that turns two corners, trying to stay on as long as possible.

Science and health content: Your body uses and needs water. Stay hydrated.
Visitors compare cylinders of water and try to guess how much water is eliminated daily from perspiring, breathing, defecating, and urinating, even when you’re not working hard. Flip labels display the correct—and surprising—answers.

Science and health content: Microbes live on your body. Hygiene and genetics.
At this exhibit, visitors find photos of the expedition buddies paired with photos of microbe colonies from each buddy’s foot. A real agar gel plate with live bacteria colonies provides a vivid point of comparison. Visitors can identify common types of bacteria by comparing what they see on the plate with photos.

Science and health content: Body movement, stride, and speed. The more you move the more energy you use.
In this interactive, the visitor’s walking silhouette is captured on video and displayed in motion on projection screens, surrounded by moving silhouettes of other visitors. Stride length, speed, and an energy score are captured for each visitor, and they are challenged to move more and in different ways to get a higher energy score.

Science and health content: Top ten injuries/illnesses that occur on expeditions. The biological processes that heal them.
Visitors learn the amazing ways that the body heals itself at the cellular level in this fun, engaging touch screen computer interactive. Visitors view and choose among the top ten injuries and illnesses that occur on expeditions, presented in playful cartoon-style animations.

Science and health content: Pupils dilate and constrict to adjust and protect vision.
In this interactive experience, visitors can see their own pupil immediately and involuntarily react to changes in light.

Science and health content: Brain anatomy. Control your brain waves.
This is an interactive game of “competitive relaxation.” Two visitors compete, each trying to move a ball to their opponent’s goal. The ball rolls away from the more-relaxed visitor, the one with more alpha and theta wave–producing brain activity.

Science and health content: Everyone has a unique health story. Optimize your health.
Visitors record their own stories on video to share with family, friends, and other visitors or to view later on the Web. Visitors can also choose to view health optimization stories from the expedition buddies and other Expedition Health visitors.

The BodyTrek Theater is an immersive, participatory object theater, the first of its kind in the Rocky Mountain Region. As the movie begins, you find yourself on an expedition up a 14,000-foot peak with an expert mountain guide. But you’re not just watching the screen, you are experiencing the trek. You learn how the human body adapts to extremes such as high elevation and exertion, and measure how your own body responds as a sensor in your chair takes your pulse and measures the oxygen content in your blood.

Drug Impacts 
Visitors test the effects of common drugs on heart rate using small aquatic crustaceans called Daphnia, also known as water fleas.