You can’t blame Tony Hawk for the childhood obesity problem in America.
When so many of his contemporaries were huddling around the latest Nintendo as teens, Hawk was challenging kids to leave their dark video game caves and pick up a skateboard.
Today, even at 45, he’s still the world’s most famous skateboarder, and still challenging kids’ minds. To wit: science, he says, is cool. And he’s set out to prove it.
Hawk has lent his name to “Tony Hawk: RAD Science,” a traveling interactive science exhibit that will be at the Museum of Science and Discovery in Fort Lauderdale through Sept. 2.
With 25 interactive experiences, the exhibit tries to show how skateboarding uses physics principles in its “radical” tricks. Kids can explore how the physics of gravity, force and velocity and balance are used in skateboarding.
Newton’s Pool, a replica of an empty swimming pool at the heart of so many backyard boarders’ first face plants and successes, shows how Newton’s Laws of Motion—inertia, acceleration and action/reaction—play into skateboarding.
The Bodacious Board Balance challenges kids to ride stationary skateboards to test their balance on classic tricks like grinding and manuals. (Don’t worry, parents, it all plays out against padded surfaces.)
Yes, there is a video game experience among the 25, where a child uses her knowledge of physics to control Hawk’s ride through a virtual skate park.
But the real lesson of the exhibit is what Hawk has been showing, through his example, for years: Real adventure occurs outdoors.
The exhibit is included in the museum entry fee, $14 for adults, $12 for children 2-12, and is free for members. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays.