Elias Garcia, 14, and his brother Antonio, 11, battled in silence Tuesday morning, each willing his mind to quiet down fastest during a competition at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Electricity detectors captured the electrical chatter inside the brothers’ noggins, which subsided in brief spurts when they closed their eyes, bowed their heads and breathed slowly.
Tuesday, museum staff unveiled new plans for an $8-million, permanent health and body exhibit at the museum, which will debut in the old Hall of Life in the spring of 2009.
Dubbed Expedition Health, the exhibit will focus on the active life in Colorado — what happens in our bodies when we get out to hike and bike, and the fuel it takes to help these bodies perform well.
“This is about empowering people to make healthy choices,” said museum director and CEO George Sparks.
Kaiser Permanente Colorado CEO Donna Lynne handed Sparks a check for $4 million Tuesday.
“Great medicine, which we think we deliver, only goes so far,” Lynne said. Sedentary kids aren’t healthy, she said, and exhibits like the one the museum is planning should help.
Expedition Health will not be funded with the bond money raised in the Better Colorado vote last fall — it will be built with private donations, Sparks said.
Besides Kaiser, the Gates Family Foundation has donated $1.5 million, and the Colorado Health Foundation $500,000, he said.
The Museum’s Hall of Life will close at the end of this April, to start a 12-month process rebuilding, said health curator Bridget Coughlin.
The new space will be highly interactive, science-oriented, active — and messy, she said.
Visitors will be able to test five common breakfast cereals for protein and sugar content — in a process that involves shaking water and cereal together into mush.
They’ll be able to race each other on exercise bicycles, a moving landscape on a screen in front of them, learning about heart rates and exercise physiology.
And then there’s MindBall, a lesson in patience and meditation tested Tuesday by the red-headed Garcia brothers, the sons of museum Chief Financial Officer Sandi Garcia.
Dave Noel, Vice President of technology and operations at the museum, watched the boys “play” on Tuesday, heads bowed, eyes closed.
“This shows that they can control their minds and calm themselves down,” Noel said. “It’s pretty neat.”
Katy Human: 303-954-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com
