Things are looking up at SPARK—and so will you—when you visit the Museum’s newly enhanced Performance Center, now featuring a live demonstration space worthy of its star attractions.
Over the years, the Center has become home to an array of outrageous electrical devices and lightning machines, including one of the largest Tesla coils in the country: the MegaZapper. As the shows and demonstrations grew more spectacular, so did the crowds, especially school groups, always eager for a front-row view.
“It’s not unusual to have a standing-room-only event in this space,” says Abby Whatley, director of programs. “We decided it was time to take everything, including the MegaZapper Show, to another level.”
Twenty inches higher, to be exact.
Thanks to support from board member John Walton, the Museum has installed a brand-new, top-of-the-line professional stage—32 feet wide, rock-solid, and more than strong enough to hold the MegaZapper, the ten-foot-tall titan of the Show, along with the equally notorious Cage of Doom.
“Getting this equipment off the ground and onto the stage was a challenge, but well worth it,” says John Jenkins, president & CEO. “The improvement is obvious—it makes the entire experience more exciting for everyone.”
For Whatley, the upgrade is especially important for school groups: “It’s not unusual to get requests for 80, 90, even one hundred students at a time. The new stage ensures that every single one of them can see, hear, and engage with what’s happening—and what’s happening is science at its most thrilling.”
Staff reactions are, as always, colorful:
“When my boss told me I’d be getting a raise, I didn’t realize he meant it so literally,” muses one educator, who prefers to remain anonymous. “But I have to admit, the new stage has become the high point of my demonstration.”
“You know what’s exciting for us?” asks Charlie Bryan, director of operations. “To recreate some of the greatest experiments in history, while surrounded by the very devices that first revealed them.”
“It’s like going back in time,” he adds. “When we dim the lights and fire up the equipment, we can’t help but think of heroes like Michael Faraday or James Clerk Maxwell, and how they presented their discoveries to audiences back in the day, at the Royal Society.”
Founded in London in 1660, the Royal Society remains one of the world’s most esteemed scientific institutions. With its motto Nullius in verba—“Take nobody’s word for it”—the Society became legendary in the 19th and 20th centuries for public lectures and demonstrations that carried science out of the laboratory and into our everyday life.
Everyone from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein was a member. Volta, Faraday, Maxwell, Darwin—even that mischievous colonial Benjamin Franklin, who was admitted on November 24, 1757—were all Fellows of the Society.
“Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell—they all live here in this building,” says Jenkins. “That’s what we strive to do: bring this collection to life and recreate those unforgettable moments of discovery.”
“It never gets old,” says Bryan. Stay grounded.