Fernbank Science Center

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The Fernbank Science Center is a museum, classroom, and woodland complex located at 156 Heaton Park Drive, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia. It is owned and operated by DeKalb County School System. The nearby Fernbank Museum of Natural History is a private non-profit organization that is separate from, but works closely with, the Science Center.

[edit] Overview

The Fernbank Science Center opened in December 1967, and is an educational facility and an integral part of the DeKalb County School System. It provides programs for the science education of local students, pre-K-12. Both its planetarium and observatory are open for public shows on specific occasions.

The mission of the Science Center is to provide and promote an understanding of science and technology and to communicate to its visitors the harmony and order of the natural world. Fernbank contains many materials for instruction, including dinosaur skeletons, rocks and minerals, a collection of tektites, an Aeronautics Education Laboratory and an electron microscope lab. The center also has an authentic Apollo spacecraft from the unmanned Apollo 6 Saturn V test flight and is home to a planetarium with a 70-foot (21 m)-diameter projection dome.

The Science Center also contains botanical collections, including tropical and succulent plants, maintains the Robert L. Staton Rose Garden (at 767 Clifton Road) which contains over 1,500 roses, and offers access to Fernbank Forest, a 65-acre (260,000 m²) undisturbed, mature mixed hardwood forest with labeled trees, shrubs, ferns, and wild flowers.