Hands down, the most popular field trip destination in the Chicago area this fall should be an exhibit on rhinotillexomania and eructation opening Saturday at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.
“It is a science lesson about all the things that the human body excretes,” museum director Joe Shacter said in a near shout Friday during a sneak preview of “Grossology, the Impolite Science of the Human Body,” a new temporary exhibit.
“Those excretions are the substances that seem to be especially fascinating to kids,” Shacter continued loudly, “and here they can find out all sorts of things about them.”
He had to raise his voice to be heard over dozens of hooting and howling 4th graders who, with almost demonic glee, had commandeered various displays in the exhibit. They were learning that rhinotillexomania is the scientific term for nose picking, as eructation is for burping.
Little boys joyously pulled levers to build up air pressure on a “tooting” machine designed to blow out deeply resonating blasts of sounds one more normally associates with restrooms than with museum galleries.
Little girls fiendishly poured excessive amounts of soda water into the gullet of a larger-than-life animatronic character until the character obliged them with wondrous, wall-shaking belches.
Teachers and parent chaperones quickly got into the spirit. They spun wheels and pulled levers with gusto that caused a model of a stomach to upchuck on one side of the hall. On another side, they waited in line with kids for their turn to launch dirtballs up a giant nose.
If anybody takes time to read them, the exhibit’s signs show how the body takes in food, digests what is usable and expels waste. It tells how and why it is important and healthy for people to upchuck, sneeze and “toot” (typically, 15 times a day).
The show, which runs through Jan. 6, is based on “Grossology,” a popular series of children’s science books by teacher Sylvia Branzei.
Mike Sarna, the Lincoln Park museum’s director of exhibits, tried to keep a straight face as he demonstrated various games and activities: “Gas Attack” pinball games; a climbing wall with pimples, blisters, scabs and warts as hand- and footholds; and a 30-foot model of a digestive system to crawl through.
“It’s just plain fun,” Sarna said, “but clearly the kids get drawn into and engaged in some pretty good science.”
The last activity is a test to see how much the visitors learned.
“They made it like a quiz show where you have to push buttons for the right answer,” said Markita Bush of Clissold School in Beverly. “It was even more fun than that booger-shooting machine that shoots boogers back at you.”
The exhibit is $4 for adults and $2 for children in addition to the museum’s fee of $6 for adults and $3 for children.