In which we play with shadows

Since Blaise had a conference Friday and Saturday, we decided that we would like to do something as a family on Sunday. (We try to do that anyway, but we aren't always successful, particularly if the weather is iffy.) Since we are still mired in a cold snap (we haven't hit our average high yet this month, and we aren't forecast to do so for at least the next week and a half), it needed to be something inside. I suggested the Cité des Sciences. Blaise agreed, provided that we didn't go to the Cité des Enfants, which he characterized as "deadly dull" (at least for the grown ups).

I packed a lunch, and we set off. First stop, the ticket counter where we used our passes to make reservations for the planetarium and for Ombres et Lumiere or Shadows and Light.

The seats in the planetarium were very nice, and, much to Cherry's consternation, folded up. She wanted hers to stay down even though she was actually sitting on my lap. The films did a nice job of making one feel like one was hurtling through space, which led to Cherry informing me that she was ready to stop going up, and that we should land before we crashed. She kept up a nice stage whisper on the topic through most of the film.

Then we went downstairs, and into the lights and shadows exhibit, which was really cool, and very hands on. We got to try to make our shadows fit into various silhouettes, experiment with how corners bend shadows, and give shows using the shadows of various kitchen implements. We also got to see video of how our bodies filled space when we danced, try to pick our own shadow out of a collection of dancing shadows, and print silhouettes of ourselves. (Ezio's was definitely the best.) We watched clips of films that featured shadows (think Zorro and Peter Pan). We tried to figure out why the shadow of the glass was rotating on the table. (There was another, rotating, glass underneath. We were actually seeing its shadow.)

After lunch and a quick jaunt around the aquarium, we headed up to the earth and space exhibit. High points were:
1) A room with motion sensors that made the projected water on the floor ripple as you "dipped" your foot in it.
2) A room with a mirrored ceiling and a mirrored floor, which led to endless reflections of us going up and down. We got to talk to Sapphire about identifying ∞ and -∞ so that we could fall through the bottom and end up at the top. (Though we didn't exactly use those words. It also had very strange greenish light, so that we all looked like we were suffering from horrible hypothermia.
3) A very cool Rube Goldberg video playing upstairs. We didn't actually watch the entire thing, which is evidently 30 minutes long. Here are a couple of clips from it: playing with fire and plain old mechanics.

We went to a couple of less interesting exhibits, waited in line at the cloakroom for a surprisingly long time, and headed home.