Join the Discover Science Center for Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination

Need something to do close to home? Visit the Discovery Science Center for their Star Wars^TM: Where Science Meets Imagination, presented by Bose Corporation now through April 15, 2012 and explore the fantasy technologies in the Star Wars films, the science behind them, and current research that may lead to real-life versions of these technologies. Learn how technologies work in the Star Wars universe through film clips and over 80 props, models and costumes. Then, discover how ideas become technologies in real life through hands-on exhibits, immersive experiences, and cutting edge innovations.

Build and test your own speeders and robots

• Ride a hovercraft and try your hand at steering
• See real artifacts, costumes and props from all six Star Wars films
• Explore the technology of droids and landspeeders
• And much more!

Hands-on Highlights:

The exhibition is organized around two technology themes, solving basic human needs: getting around (transportation) and getting along with ever smarter machines (robotics):

Getting Around: After examining Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and other floating vehicles from Star Wars, find out how things move without touching the ground in the real world, from models of flying cars to commercial spaceplanes.

Robots and People: Meet C-3PO and R2-D2 and explore how people relate to the robots in Star Wars. The exhibition also features the creation of real world robots that navigate sense and understand the world around them, while communicating in increasingly sophisticated ways.

Personal Hovercraft
Climb into an air-cushion vehicle, try your hand at steering a hovercraft and see how it compares to a wheeled vehicle like a car.

Maglev Engineering Design Lab
Experiment with magnetic levitation, imagining, creating, and testing your own floating Maglev cars by propelling them along a magnetic track.

Robot Engineering Design Lab
Become a robot designer in this hands-on activity. Select wheels or treads, experiment with sensors, and program your robot to navigate through a course.

Building Communities Augmented Reality Interactive
Build a spaceport, moisture farm community and walled Jawa town. Placing cards on a table—the physical landscape—a computer superimposes a building on a site in virtual reality and real time. Use these cards to try your hand at designing and building a successful community.

Millennium Falcon Experience

Experience a virtual jump to lightspeed in a full-size replica of the cockpit of Star Wars Episode IV’s Millennium Falcon as a multimedia presentation explores what we know about our own galaxy in a breathtaking ride to the edge of the Universe. 

Discover Science Center
2500 North Main Street
Santa Ana, CA 92705

This exhibit is going on now through April 15, 2012. For more information on ticket prices and hours visit their website. Or call (714) 542-2823.