A Trip to Children's Museum in Muscat

This is a review about a Museum I had written when I was on a trip to Muscat.

It was a cool and windy day on 12^th January, 2014. We had decided to visit a Children’s Museum in Muscat. My sister, Zainab, had read about it on the Internet and everyone was eager too visit it.

We had woken up at around 9:15, and by the time the whole family was out the main door, it was 11:43. We walked to Al Qurum Park, which is not very far where we were staying. Al Qurum Park is a huge and beautiful, well-maintained natural park. We went inside and started walking straight forward. One end of the park opens towards the Children’s Museum. It took us around 35 minutes to reach the museum which was a dome shaped building. The walk was long and tiring, but once inside the museum, we could realize that the long walk was worth it.

In the museum, we were greeted by Arab women. Baba bought tickets for us all, and then we started looking at the experiments.

The museum was a Science one. The activities and experiments were all related to science. A woman guided us towards the first demonstration, which was of a hot air balloon. A giant plastic balloon was placed in the middle of the museum. We had to press a button, which lit flames beneath the balloon. Within seconds, the air inside the balloon became so hot, that the balloon started floating in the air. When the air in the balloon got cooler, the balloon came down by itself.

The concept of this demonstration was to show how hot air was lighter than cold air. So light, in fact, that it could take a balloon off the ground. This was how a hot air balloon worked as well. A fire keeps going under the balloon so the air inside it stays hot and so the balloon floats due to the light air.

In the museum, there were also microscopes, and glass slides to use them, with tiny things in them like the wing of a fly, or the mouth of a mosquito. Apart from them, there were also coins and postage stamps you could observe using a microscope. It was interesting, even to have a look at your own finger through a microscope.

Another interesting thing in the museum was a model of the Solar System. It didn't show the whole Solar System but just the Sun, Moon and Earth.  The Earth was rotating on its axis, and revolving around the Sun. The Moon was revolving around the Earth. It was an extraordinary model, and the best thing about it was that the Moon and Earth moved around and this way one could understand about the solar system easily.

Another activity there was a model of Gears, a simple machine.  On a soft board, there were many gears, made of foam. You had to arrange them in such a way, that when you turn one gear, all of them move around.

There were many different models and demonstrations; for example, there was a Skeleton, Mind Games, Puzzles and many more things.

This is the best museum I ever visited and I had a wonderful experience in here. There are many more experiments there than I have mentioned in this article and it takes more than one visit there to cover the whole museum. I would suggest to anyone who reads this that if they ever have a chance to visit Muscat, please visit this museum.

Thank you