8th and 9th graders traveled to downtown Charlotte, where they visited the Mint Museum and the "Machines and Mechanisms" exhibit at the McColl Center. They viewed kinetic sculptures as well as complex machines constructed from simple objects, such as gear springs, levers, wheels, chains, wires, and ropes. They then returned to Woodlawn to complete their integrated science/art project on simple machines, building their own machines out of some of the same components they had seen in the exhibit.