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MICROBES: Invisible Invaders, Amazing Allies

Experience the unseen world of microbes in a high-tech, visually compelling interactive exhibit that includes computer games, hands-on experiences, and dazzling special effects. Microbes: Invisible Invaders, Amazing Allies provides valuable information about one of the most pervasive and important, although misunderstood, influences in our lives--the world of microbes.

Microbes: Invisible Invaders, Amazing Allies takes visitors on a journey through an unseen world, one which sustains all life on earth while holding the deadly potential to wipe out millions. The interactive, 5,000-square-foot exhibition examines what microbes are, what they look like, the history of disease, emerging diseases and how research is helping find cures that save lives.

Visitors can interactively explore the microbial universe with the technological magic of high definition volumetric display bringing life to full-color viruses and bacteria that appear to float in space. Leading-edge technology allows visitors to see crystallography of the HIV, herpes and polio viruses represented as "virtual" 3-D photography. Through high-tech video games, visitors can combat bacteria with antibiotics, use virtual reality, help microbes gobble up oil spills, and participate in a question/answer quiz show about microbes' good deeds.

Finally, exhibit visitors are given the opportunity to embark on the "new frontier" and meet researchers in 3-D holography as they describe their careers in science. Based on the book The Invisible Invaders by noted science and medical writer Peter Radetsky, the Microbes exhibit is committed to helping people better understand the whole story of microbes--both the good and the bad.

Exhibit Sections

Exhibit content is organized into 10 sections and in
the first four sections, the exhibit examines the history of some of mankind's most devastating diseases. Sections include:

1) Paris Crypt
A robotic guide in a skull-filled catacomb below Paris describes the bubonic plague which killed about 56 million Europeans from 1340 to 1420. He wears a beaked mask thought to protect people from the plague, which they believed was caused by poison gas rising from the Earth.

2) Egyptian Tomb
Inside this re-created tomb a photo of the unwrapped mummy of Ramses V shows pockmarks from the smallpox virus that attacked and probably killed Egypt's ruler, who died around 1151 B.C. The tomb also features a replica of a sarcophagus and a copy of an Egyptian stone tablet which provided the first pictorial record of polio.

3) Aztec Ruins
Figurines dating from before 750 A.D. show evidence of diseases from which the peoples native to Central America must have suffered. Since diseases such as leprosy and smallpox were not present in Central America when these figurines were made, they suggest that other disfiguring diseases attacked the peoples of what is now Mexico.

4) Main Street North America
This section describes epidemics of polio, flu and tuberculosis striking close to home. An iron lung from the 1950s offers a look at one of the respiration devices that helped save the lives of many polio survivors. A three-minute video presentation describes the discovery of penicillin in 1928 and the breakthrough of mass production as a "wonder drug" during World War II.

5) Microbe TV
Microbe Man, the exhibit's cartoon super-hero and exhibit guide, and VJ Sabrina host a 90-second animated video that illustrates just how miniscule microbes really are.

6) Microbial Universe
Visitors can explore a new cosmos, the hidden universe of microbes. Eight colorful, volumetric holograms floating in space present different microbes, including Ebola and E. coli, as three-dimensional sculptures. Images from an electron microscope and a Wentzscope light microscope offer a rare, close-up view of real microbes such as HIV, rabies and Ebola. Animation in two giant robotic microbes, a robotic bacteriophage and a robotic protozoan attacking a paramecium, simulate how these microscopic organisms invade other microbes in real life.

7) Body of Disease
Exhibit-goers discover how harmful microbes invade human bodies and how humans fight back. Five hands-on displays demonstrate how people fight infection both with the body's natural defenses and with antibiotic defenses to prevent and treat infectious disease. Interactive displays include a game of "virtual" microbe combat, a computer game that fires antibiotic artillery and a video game featuring a microbe race in 3-D animation.

8) Pete's Place
In this re-created apartment setting, more hands-on displays reveal the beneficial and essential roles microbes play. In the kitchen, humorous narratives by talking, cartoon-like microbes relate how microbes affect the everyday fare people cook and eat.

Players of the Gobble De Goop video game can guide munching microbes as they gobble up an oil spill. The Microbe Quiz Show, an interactive TV program hosted by Microbe Man, invites visitors to a true-false test of their microbial knowledge.

9) Microbial Superhighway
Visitors enter an airplane fuselage to learn how modern transportation, overcrowding and pollution foster the spread of infectious disease around the world. An interactive world map illustrates the global distribution of age-old and emerging diseases.

10) New Frontiers
A 3-D video presentation by renowned scientist Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), describes advances in medical research, including gene therapy--delivering therapeutic genes to cells--and the creation of synthetic drugs.

Interactive Displays

Thirteen interactive displays (including a virtual reality game) located throughout the exhibit offer children of all ages hands-on discovery of scientific concepts.

1) "Spotting Tuberculosis" Lung X-rays
(Main Street North America)
A comparision of X-ray film of healthy and diseased lungs reveals light spots ("tubercles") on the lungs infected by tuberculosis.

2) Electron Microscope (Microbial Universe)
Visitors get a rare view of real viruses such as HIV {4 millionths of an inch (0.0001 mm) across} as they would appear through an electron microscope--a microscope of extremely high power.

3) Wentzscope (Microbial Universe)
Exhibit-goers can peer through a Wentzscope--a microscope that reflects light off an object to magnify the image--to observe fungi, protozoa and bacteria as they appear 500 times larger than life.

4) "Lines of Defense" (Body of Disease)
A foosball-style game demonstrates the body's natural lines of defense against infectious disease.

5) "Virtual Invaders" (Body of Disease)
Exhibit-goers can battle microbe invaders in a game of unencumbered virtual reality. Players try to wipe out incoming viruses with white blood cells in virtual combat, simulating the continuous defenses of the body's immune system.

6) "Antibiotic Artillery" (Body of Disease)
In this fast-paced video game, players fire rounds of antibiotic ammunition at infectious bacteria. The object is to destroy as many bacteria as possible by using all antibiotics available to show the importance of completing the course of prescribed medication.

7) "Race a Bug" (Body of Disease)
To illustrate how some microbes propel themselves, this video game pits two computer microbes in a winding race to the finish line. Players maneuver their mobile microbes through simulated arteries in 3-D animation.

8) "Microbe Quiz Show" (Pete's Place)
Microbe Man, a cartoon super-hero and exhibit guide, hosts this interactive television game show. Players can test their microbial knowledge with a series of true-false questions.

9) "Gobble De Goop" (Pete's Place)
In this video game, museum-goers use a joystick to guide munching microbes as they gobble up an oil spill.

10) "It's All Connected" (Pete's Place)
Turning an assembly of gears labeled "microbes," "air," "water," "plant," "sun," "land" and "animal" demonstrates the essential part microbes play in sustaining life on Earth.

11) Good-Guy Microbes (Pete's Place)
Entering a simulated kitchen triggers audio sequences by talking, cartoon-like microbes. The humorous narratives describe examples of microbes at work in the kitchen making cheese, helping bread rise and making compost.

12) "Disease Hot Zones" (Microbial Superhighway)
An interactive world map illustrates the global distribution of age-old and emerging diseases. When visitors push a button to select a disease such as Ebola or cholera, fiber optics illuminate the map areas where the disease is found.