Welcome to a family oriented, hands-on experience of the Earth Sciences. And it's FREE to visit!

If you've ever picked up a rock on a beach, or paused at a road cutting to wonder what was in those colourful strata, then you've come to the right place! The Science Centre is an area within Mineral World given over exclusively to experiencing rocks, minerals, crystals and fossils!

There's a great range of hands-on displays, which encourage you to look, interact and learn. Parents with small children will usually work as a team, but children over the age of 8 are capable of experiencing this area for themselves, at their own learning pace.

Each display has been carefully developed to illustrate some aspect of this fascinating planet on which we live. Peer into a lighted box, where a wheel of fossils, ancient and not so ancient, can be rotated into view. Gold is heavy, right? But just how heavy? Try to lift a standard Reserve Bank gold bar, weighing 400 troy ounces. It's a lot heavier than you'd expect, and illustrates the principle of density.

Can rocks really float? Sure! And there are two on display which do so for very different reasons! Try to figure it out for yourself, but if you're stumped by the puzzle, there are labels to explain and challenge.

Do you want to see bugs in amber under a magnifier? How about touching large hand-samples of rocks and crystals? There's a display about meteorites, and another about jade too! How about rockhounding on Vancouver Island? There's a funky kaleidoscope, where the colours and patterns are formed by brightly-hued minerals. And there's everyone's favourite, the ultra-violet mineral display, where you can change the samples and watch them glow in the dark!

Rewarding Young Earth Scientists!