White Water is a large scale, white water landscape that provides multiple opportunities for visitors to experiment, change variables and observe cause and effect of water systems. It’s a natural platform for exploring engineering and the physics of water, while also celebrating the artful pattern-making properties of fluids. This exhibit incorporates jets, currents, rapids, eddies, foam, froth and all the interesting things that happen when water mixes with air. There are full-body dryers mounted to the side of the exhibit allowing visitors to have uninhibited fun without worrying about staying dry.

​

White Water has three main visitor interactive subsections: the Rapid Raceway, the Whirligig Circuit, and the Splash and Flow Basin. Rapid Raceway consists of six visitor activated hand pumps that can pump water from the pump room into two parallel trough channels. The water flows down the troughs and over a reflecting pool into a vortex dish which turns the water into a whirlpool as it funnels down into the lower basin.  The Whirligig Circuit is the lower water basin in the center of the exhibit. Around this pool are six hand pump squirters. Visitors pump the piston cylinders and push water into a number of spinning targets, a collision disc, and two dump buckets.  The Splash & Flow Basin has a variety of visitor activated water sources and gates. Visitors can lift water from the lowest pool with an Archimedes Screw that raises the water 8 feet in the air to fill a big bucket overhead. The water runs out of the bucket through a perforated pipe revealing the physics behind the water pressure/depth relationship.

 

Two computer-controlled dancing water jets are programmed to make jumping patterns of water, while a third vertical water jet is a user-operated by a hand crank on the side of the exhibit. A water bell on a computer-controlled circuit continuously sprays water in a dome-like bell. Visitors can pump the hand pumps in the Rapid Raceway to affect the pressure/water flow of the whole exhibit which, in turn, can affect the water bell. Visitors can pump the hand pumps and watch the water bell at the other end of the exhibit begin to morph and dance and then return to its bell shape when the water pressure re-stabilizes.

​

Location:

MOXI The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation, Santa Barbara, CA