Beginning in April, Mid-America Science Museum, in collaboration with the Friends of Hot Springs National Park and Superior Bathhouse Brewery, will offer "big kids" the chance to learn more about science in a national park setting while enjoying a cold brew.
The inaugural event, "Ferment-To-Be," a lecture about beer making, will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. April 14 at the Ozark Bath House, with three other programs to follow in the late summer, fall and winter.
Noreen Killen, director of operations at the Mid-America Science Museum, said the museum was excited about the series.
"We are partnering with the Friends of Hot Springs National Park, and also Rose Schweikhart from Superior Bathhouse Brewery, and we are going to work together to bring science downtown to the Ozark Bath House," she said.
Casey Wylie, director of education, said the series is for "the big kids."
"It's going to be 21 and over. We're going to talk about the more adult side of science, we're going to get to drink beer while we're talking about it, and it's going to be super fun," Killen said.
General admission is $25 and includes two Superior drink tickets and hors d'oeuvres per evening, or $20 for members of either the museum or the Friends of Hot Springs National Park.
Other events include "I Spy The Night Sky" on Aug. 11, "Don't Drink That!" on Oct. 13, and "You're In Hot Water, Pal" on Dec. 8, focused on topics including the Perseids meteor shower, clean drinking water, and the science behind the hot water in the national park.
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There will also be a free event in the series at Bridge Street LIVE! in June.
"It's all about music, so it's all about sound waves," Wylie said. "I'm quite excited about the topics, actually. There's a lot of really interesting ones."
The museum will not have as large a presence at the April event "because it's just too perfect. It has its own thing going," she said.
"Rose is quite wonderfully going to be teaching all about the science of beer, but then after that, the first one that we are really (a big part of) is 'I Spy the Night Sky' where we'll be talking about the Perseids Meteor Shower coming up in August," Wylie said.
After there are lectures on the topics, "then I'll be coming in with a couple of activities," Wylie said.
After "I Spy the Night Sky," she said she will look at "what exactly is a constellation. What does that mean in the night sky, not just on Earth, and then just a couple of fun activities making your own constellations."
The series may be for adults, but "I like to say it's for the big kids because it's for adults and that I'll be using deeper science terms and bigger science words, but we are still going to do some kids' stuff," Wylie said.
Killen said the museum and the national park have wanted to work together on more projects.
"We've been trying to work with the national park downtown for a while now," she said.
NPS Superintendent Laura Miller has been talking to Mid-America's executive director, Diane LaFollette, "for a while and trying to figure out how we can partner even more than we already do, and we've been trying to do some adult science here at the museum, but it's a little bit harder because we're here, out of the way," Killen said.
"This way, we can do it downtown, and Laura had this great idea 'Let's use the Ozark Bath House,' so we're going to go down there and it's going to be super fun because people can come right after work, head downtown for a couple of hours from 5:30 to 7:30 (p.m.), have a couple of beers, enjoy some fun science experiments and go to dinner, do whatever they want afterwards," she said.
The museum attracts a lot of families, but they want to reach more young adults, Killen said.
"We noticed that the community really needs that. It's kind of a void that we wanted to fill," she said, "That's usually the market that we don't quite get. We get parents, we get kids, we get grandparents, but that more young adult range, we just really want to do something for them."