Discovery Museum

The Discovery Museum will design and build a new exhibit exploring the subject of cause and effect, targeting children ages zero to 12 and their adult companions. Informed by an advisory group of researchers, museum staff will work with exhibit design consultants to prototype, develop, and fabricate up to 10 interactive, accessible exhibit components, highlighting different types of causal relationships. To extend these learning opportunities to a broader audience, the museum will partner with public libraries and child-focused nonprofit organizations, which will host replicated subsets of the exhibit at their sites. They will jointly develop supplemental activities such as children’s reading lists and take-home activity kits to allow visitors to continue exploring on their own. An external evaluator will assess project outcomes, which will include increasing participants’ knowledge about cause and effect mechanisms and building their confidence and persistence.