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"Awesome!"
"Yeah!"
"This is so cool, daddy!"
These are some typical reactions to the University's newest addition, the ultra high-tech Friedman SCIENCE! Center in the Sciences Library. The Center, which is funded by several grants from the United States Government and has been widely publicized for the access it grants the Brown community to groundbreaking advances in SCIENCE!, opened earlier this semester and has been thrilling students and professors alike.
The Center's main attractions include thirteen baking soda volcanoes, a "Mentos-Diet Cola Room" where visitors can make their own totally awesome SCIENCE!, and, explained one Center supervisor, "one of those cool-ass air shooters that you put a ball on and the ball stays in the air and looks like it's just floating there." The Center, whose displays were organized through a collaborative effort between the departments of Geology, Physics, and Neuroscience, also boasts seven kinetic-balls-on-strings displays and a "potion station" where visitors can mix chemicals behind a fume hood, often with colorful results.
In its grant, the Center is described as "an interactive and entirely cutting edge way to provide those doing groundbreaking research with access to the work of their peers and to a rich network of SCIENtific data." The grant continues, "Also, there will be one of those spiraling coin depositories where you put a quarter in and it toilet-bowls down into the bottom.
"Thus, the Center embodies the spirits not only of SCIENtific discovery, but also of community outreach. Because the spiraly thing is for charity."
Initially, confusion had arisen over the possibility of a "Science Center" in the Sciences Library and the possible redundancies associated with having a science center within a science library. Said one student, "The Scili already has so much science in it. I've wanted a SCIENCE!-devoted facility for a long time, but I always figured it would go by the wayside given the recent budget cuts. So I can't tell you how excited I was to find out that Friedman isn't housing some boring old science but SCIENCE!."
The Center also boasts its own snack bar and gift shop complete with rock-shaped jawbreaker dispenser, food-coloring station, and Friedman-themed dinosaur toy sets "for the little paleontologist in all of us."
The Noser attempted to reach President Simmons regarding the Center's opening, but she was busy launching tennis balls from a giant rubber band held by Deans Bergeron and Miller.
