Dinosaur Digs, Particle Accelerators and Crash Tests: Eight Epic Summer Vacations

Witness a Car Crash

Kettering University Crash Safety Center, Flint, Mich.
At Kettering’s crash-test facility, visitors get to watch something being mercilessly smashed. Here, students and technicians test the strength and durability of automobile seats, seatbelts, airbags and other components. Using a deceleration sled that takes just 100 milliseconds to stop subjects moving at up to 40 miles an hour, researchers create 70 Gs of deceleration—100 times the jolt of braking in traffic. In addition to testing commercial autos, Kettering conducts occupant-safety tests for military transport vehicles and investigates things like how safe it is for a pop star to drive around with a baby in her lap. A workshop for kids allows them to create safety systems for eggs on a mini sled.
Trip tip: Be sure to meet Kettering’s family of crash-test dummies. Peek at the steel-and-rubber innards of dismembered dummies and, when they’re not being hurled into a wall, have your picture taken with them.
Info: E-mail Sheryl Janca or go to Kettering Crash Safety

Descend Into Darkness

Kansas Underground Salt Museum, Hutchinson, Kansas
A two-minute elevator ride brings visitors 650 feet belowground into the winding mines of one of the country’s largest salt deposits. At the Kansas Underground Salt Museum, 150 miles of tunnels connect 980 acres of mines, which provide 500,000 tons of road salt every year. On your way through, you’ll meander beneath 17-foot walls of sparkling crystalline salt and learn about the science and history of the mine, which opened in 1923. You’ll see how water droplets collect salt dust that builds to form hollow stalactites, or “salt straws,” which can grow to five feet before falling from the ceiling. Salt being a natural preservative, the tour includes relics such as the world’s oldest-known living organisms—250-million-year-old bacteria—and unusual items miners of yore have left behind.
Trip tip: Adjacent to the museum is a bonus feature: Underground Vaults and Storage, a two-million-square-foot archive that depends on the stable climate to protect seven million boxes filled with documents from around the globe, and the original reels of almost every movie ever made.
Info: Admission is $7.35–$18.25; reservations encouraged; Kansas Underground Salt Museum

Study the Sea

Pangaea Exploration, Various Destinations Worldwide
Explore uninhabited Pacific islands, swim with manta rays, and add to our knowledge of marine ecosystems. For intrepid civilians who want to man rigs and mine data alongside a crew of scientists, Pangaea Exploration sells passage on the Sea Dragon, a 72-foot sailboat used for international research expeditions. The organization offers as many as a dozen trips every year, most of them focused on conservation or remote island surveys. In May, for instance, the crew of the Sea Dragon will perform an environmental survey of the Northern Cook Islands, then assess ecosystem damage in the Northern Line Islands. Spots are also still available—at $10,000 a pop—for the 20-day July 7 voyage to collect and analyze the plastic debris that is polluting the North Pacific between Hawaii and Vancouver.
Trip tip: Batten down. These aren’t luxury cruises—accommodations are spare, and participants must be in good health and able to lift a third of their body weight so that they can handle such crew tasks as manning lines and pulling in the sampling trawl.
Info: Pangaea Exploration

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