Mada Na – Mobile Science Museum

How is a vacuum created?  What causes short-sightedness? And why do some objects float on water? These and other questions are answered by Mada Na – the mobile science museum that travels between different junior high schools in the periphery demonstrating to youngsters physics theories and encouraging them to investigate, experiment and find out for themselves.  World ORT Kadima Mada is providing children living in the periphery with an interesting and different learning experience in an effort to motivate them into choosing to major in physics upon entering senior high school.

The Mada Na Mobile Science Museum consists of five different displays, each on a different physics topic.  Each display consists of approximately 15 hands-on exhibits that enable the children to experience different theories within the topics.

This program enables experiential learning of the physics’ laws and theories studied in senior high, pertaining to the following five disciplines: electricity and magnetism, optics, mechanics, gases and liquids and wave.

The program is composed of 5 interactive displays, each focusing on one of the topics above and located in the main entrance hall of the Eshkol Payis science buildings adjacent to junior high schools.   Each museum consists of approximately 15 exhibits each of which refers to a different theory in that field.  The displays are operated by the senior high’s teachers, instructors and senior students.  As well as being part of the school curriculum, the mobile museum is also open to students from other schools as well as the general public, enabling the population of the Israel’s geographic periphery to enjoy and benefit from the same type of facilities available in the center of the country.

During the 2015-16 school year, a new perspective was added to each display in the form of a mechanical engineering component that the schoolchildren have to assemble themselves based on the material that they have learnt.

The Mada Na museum is a unique concept developed by World ORT Kadima Mada to encourage independent and challenging learning and active in-depth research that clearly reflects the material learnt in class.

The children are invited to activate the hands-on exhibits for themselves and see what happens. This interactive type of display enables the children to practically experience the theoretical content that the teacher discusses in the classroom.

This is the fifth year that this project has been in operation and evaluation results show that 91% of the children exposed to the exhibits would recommend participation to their friends and 69% are seriously considering majoring in science in senior high as a result of being involved in this type of study.