Shanghai Wind Power Museum, the first of its kind in China, opened to the public Tuesday at the gate of the Shanghai Binhai Forest Park in coastal Nanhui District.

The museum is one of 40 science museums which have been planned for 2010. It will be open to primary and middle school students as extracurricular activity venues.

"The purpose of the museum is to simplify and demonstrate the science theories in textbooks," Wang Jianping, an official in charge of popular science development in Shanghai Science and Technology Commission, said yesterday.

The two-story museum is made up of four exhibition halls including wind-driven power generation and the relationship between wind power and people.

The museum designers said the most innovative exhibit is a three-dimensional projection screen - an interactive cartoon show in which visitors can operate a virtual child to reach any part of a mountain.

The screen will display the level of wind strength at different spots of a mountain - similar to the way venues of wind power are scientifically selected.

Additionally, various wind power machines are also exhibited, including the oldest windmill in the early 14th century in Holland and the state-of-the-art machines which are widely used today.

Visitors can also compare the energy of wind power to that of riding exercise bicycles: the faster people ride a bicycle, the more illumination appear inside the buildings in a background setting. The screen also shows how much wind power is needed to achieve the same illumination.

"We want to give visitors, particularly children, a very direct experience of energy despite its forms," said Hu Xuezeng, a chief designer of the museum.

(Shanghai Daily March 30, 2006)