By Karen Klinger

Looking for holiday activities that can enrapture kids of all ages? How about learning what is in store for space flight, looking at a 3-D holographic image that may reflect tomorrow’s television or finding out how a bottle of water could provide the electric power for the house of the future?

And why not start on the day after Thanksgiving—along with up to 1,500 others—by watching a “chain reaction” of various jerry-built contraptions all interacting together in a variation of a scientific phenomenon that Rube Goldberg could be proud of?

It is all possible in Cambridge through the efforts of the MIT Museum, an institution dedicated to the idea that learning about science and engineering can be fun as well as educational.

On November 27 (or “FAT” for the Friday after Thanksgiving) the museum will host its 12th annual Chain Reaction Event from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Rockwell Cage Gymnasium at 120 Vasser Street. Created and led by kinetic sculptor Arthur Ganson, the aim is to create “cascading” energy linking the creations of teams ranging from scout troops to families.

As Ganson told the publication “Technology Review,” a “chain reaction is pure theater—it has an understandable plot punctuated by unpredictable events, gripping tension, and occasional moments of hilarity.”

Beyond the FAT event, the museum (located in Central Square) is offering plenty of things to see and do through its current offerings, highlighted by an exhibition called “Sampling MIT.”

The idea is to give museum goers a glimpse of the thousands of research projects going on at one of the world’s premier research universities. Among the highlighted subjects is the “Future of Spaceflight,” which offers an overview of the work of a cross-disciplinary group of scientists, engineers, astronauts and even historians.

Following NASA’s recent revelation that it has found evidence of water—perhaps an abundance of it—on the moon, space exploration’s future (Are we going back there? Can we establish a moon base?) seems all the more relevant.

Here on Earth, a team led by MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera is exploring a way to use solar energy by storing it in fuel cells composed primarily of water. Although solar panel technology has advanced over the years, a major obstacle to making greater use of the sun’s energy has been finding a way to store that power inexpensively.

As a museum exhibit explains, the researchers in Nocera’s laboratory are experimenting with a storage technology similar to that of plants, in that it uses “cheap, abundant and benign materials” along with solar rays to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases.

At a recent event to celebrate the opening of the exhibition, Nocera’s team set up a sample “fuel cell” that young, budding scientists (in some cases, very young) could experiment with themselves. As graduate student Tim Cook explained, the ultimate goal is that “you won’t need power lines” and “one bottle of water could power your whole house.

Ah…but to do that, humans need inventive brains, and to that end, the exhibition highlights the work of the Martinos Imaging Center at MIT, where for the first time, campus researchers have the capability of comprehensively capturing images of a living person’s brain.

The range of issues they are pursuing extend from the origins of consciousness to the viability of brain implants.

But the brain also needs entertainment, and the exhibition looks at one way we might in the future see television images in three-dimensional form without the need for wearing funny-looking glasses. Researchers at the world-famous Media Lab are looking at how a mix of computers, lasers and other devices could make a “consumer-friendly” system to achieve that possible.

Visitors to the museum’s first-floor “Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery” will also be able to see exhibits involving nanotechnology, climate change research and a 3-D “holopod” camera for exploring the world’s oceans.

Hanging on the wall in the gallery they can also find photographs that are not a part of the exhibition, but are curiously intriguing—even mesmerizing. Part of a more permanent installation, they illustrate a phenomenon known as “hybrid images”—the subject of research at MIT into visual perceptions.

Seen from one distance, the photographs all appear to be of Albert Einstein. Seen from another, they turn into other well-known people, including Marilyn Monroe (no, really!). The display explains how that is possible, but it almost requires seeing to be believed.
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On November 23, President Obama announced an ambitious effort to get American children interested in science, technology, math and engineering that will include companies, non-profit groups and even Elmo and Big Bird from “Sesame Street.”

Cantabrigians have a more immediate path—they can just head to the MIT museum.

For more information about the MIT Museum, located at 265 Massachusetts Ave., call 617-253-5927 or go to: http://www.web.mit.edu/museum.

To see a video of last year’s FAT Chain Reaction event, go to: http://web.mit.edu/museum/multimedia/fat2008.html.