Follow
Continuing our coverage of the lovely city of Houston in Texas, it is time to talk about The Health Museum, one of the good attractions of the Museum District near downtown Houston.
The Health Museum; a good option in the heart of the Museum District in Houston, Texas.
Photo Credit: Dayana Barrionuevo. www.dayanabarrionuevo.com
There are three main areas in The Health Museum: A temporary exhibit that rotates every few months, and two permanent exhibits: One with all the giant sized organs called Amazing Body Gallery, where you can also find the very interesting Heart Attack Machine; and another permanent exhibit called DeBakey Cell Lab, which is a hands on experience for kids and parents alike.
The Amazing Body Gallery exhibit:
It is an exhibit to go through the human body and know in more detail how each organ works. It also has 30 interactive videos and audio booths to further explain what we are seeing and help us learn about anatomy, and get health and self care tips and advices.
Tweet this quoteWithin this exhibit you will get to see some very interesting activities to share with your family:
– The Giant Heart and the Heart Attack Machine: It is a giant 15 feet heart that showcases the blood flow of the heart and simulates a heart attack every twenty minutes. Below you can see the video of the Heart Attack machine at work. You can also hear an audio track giving context to what happens during a heart attack to a person, and a 911 call for help.
– The Calory Burning Machine: An interactive activity for kids to exercise and learn how much activity a person needs to do in order to burn calories from different food.
– Several Exercise Activities: To see how our body reacts to exercise. An example would be the human “hamster wheel”.
– The Colossal Colon: A labyrinth of the colon that you can go through and know your intestines from the inside. It is more fun that it sounds!
– Body Cuts and Layers: There are several cuts and layers to take a look at how a body is from inside, and to learn more about the Human Body. This exhibit is from the same creators of the exhibit “Body Worlds”.
– The Organ Projector: This is a very cool area of The Health Museum. You can see yourself in a very special mirror that will project your organs to your shirt, so you can see where everything is placed on your body. It best works on a plain T-Shirt, or, as the case of the photo, on a T-shirt turned inside out so it shows better on the reflection, instead of mixing with the print of your tee.
The Body Organs Projector at The Health Museum in Houston, Texas.
Photo Credit: Dayana Barrionuevo www.dayanabarrionuevo.com
– The DeBakey Cell Lab: A permanent exhibit designed to teach and inspire kids into loving biology and medical science. It is a full fledged lab that includes seven different real experiments for visitors to perform and learn. Kids seven and up can do this lab tour. Cool thing about it is that every person who enters the DeBakey Cell Lab will get a lab coat, goggles, and all the needed equipment for the experience. And the activities are both in Spanish or English as needed.
Since each experiment takes anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour, in order for you to do the full tour, you should think of alloting a couple hours there, and a full afternoon to The Health Museum as a whole.
The DeBakey Cell Lab at The Health Museum in Houston, Texas.
Photo Credit: Guillermo Paz www.seriesandtv.com
One very interesting thing The Health Museum has is its Gift Shop: Among other health related items, the most curious we found were the teddy organs and the teddy viruses: Livers, Kidneys and even Teddy Testicles! There are also teddy herpes, teddy Flu, teddy hepatitis, teddy small pox and many more.
The Health Museum is a great idea for a family vacation in Houston, as is only 7 dollars for kids 3 to 11 and elders over 65. Toddlers get in for free, and kids 12 and up through adults entrance is 9 bucks. There is an extra cost for the DeBakey Lab Cell that costs 3 bucks.
As if all that was not enough, The Health Museum is located right next to The Children´s Museum, making it a great idea to visit one in the morning and one after lunch.
I hope this article helps you plan your next vacation to Houston, Texas. You can follow me on Social Media for more Travel Tips and Reviews, and comment below with your experience if you´ve visited The Health Museum.