Close to six thousand people were invited to the salute, including members of Congress and 800 inner-city youths. In the Kennedy Center's Grand Foyer, at the end of the Hall of States, the Exploratorium's humble Bernoulli Blower had one of its finest moments. The Exploratorium's Exhibit Services group has created beautiful Bernoulli Blowers that have been purchased by science centers and museums all over the world, including the Children's Museum in Hermosillo, Mexico, the Japan Science Foundation, the National Museum of Natural Science in Tai Chung, Taiwan, ROC, and the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham. On the other end of the spectrum, this exhibit has been widely used as a demonstration by teachers, including the Exploratorium's own Teacher Institute staff. Scaled down, and making use of common materials, the Exploratorium's classroom version relies on a hair dryer and a table tennis ball.
Students can experiment with the same phenomena explored by the large-scale museum exhibit.
The activity shown above has been published in the Exploratorium Science Snackbook Series , published by John Wiley and Sons, in the book entitled The Spinning Blackboard and Other Dynamic Experiments on Force and Motion .