ROCHESTER — Do you know what a mastodon tusk can reveal about weather, how much an average woolly mammoth weighed, or where an insect’s ears are located? Probably not. But a trip to the Rochester Museum and Science Center — capped off with a Beatles and a Pink Floyd laser show at the Strasenburgh Planetarium — may be just what you need to reawaken the childlike inquisitiveness still buried inside.

While the Science Center is most definitely geared to kids, the best thing about it is that once you walk through the door, you can’t help wanting to be a kid again yourself.

We began our tour at Expedition Earth when a giant fiberglass cast mastodon skeleton caught my eye. In a case beneath it lay a tusk, excavated in Avon, N. Y., and proven to be more than 11,000 years old. Archaeologists, surely the predecessor of today’s CSI teams, can determine the temperature of water the mastodon drank by examining oxygen atoms trapped in the tusk. Standing quite close to the mastodon, its hairy cousin — the wooly mammoth — towered above us. When alive, these ancestors of the elephant weighed as much a six tons and traveled in herds.

Next, we found the Adventure Zone. Here children scaled a mini-climbing wall, sat in chairs and attempted to lift their own weight using different types of pulleys, and pulled levers and opened gate valves to fill or empty a mock canal system. In the weather section of the zone, we measured wind speed and made clouds.

My favorite “toy” was the Stream Table, where kids stood, their arms covered to the elbows in wet sand, discovering how the power of water can create a winding river. I would have loved to get my hands in that muck and splash water to make the “river” twist and turn! I’m sure some of the other adults there felt the same, but we all showed restraint and moved along to the “How Things Work” exhibit where we could learn the basic principles behind everyday devices like a speedometer, a traffic signal, a home thermostat, a muffler, and disc brakes. A play zone with life-sized tinker toys completes the fun in this second floor installation.

Our next stop, “Flight to Freedom: Rochester’s Underground Railroad,” extols the work done by Frederick Douglass, who lived many years on Alexander Street in Rochester. Here you can stand inside a replica of a hollow tree reportedly used to hide food, clothing and other supplies to help slaves on the move.

And you can read about how, under cover of darkness, freedom seekers were transported by wagon or row boat from one underground safe house to another. You can even hop in a boat and row to your heart’s content like my husband and some other little boys did. Or you can stop to ponder the question posed next to each of the tributes to three local abolitionists: “Would you open your home to strangers in need?” “Would you challenge accepted beliefs of your society?” “Once you achieved a comfortable life, would you risk everything to help others?”

We finished our tour on a lighter note — at the Giant Insects Exhibition, which has been extended to Jan. 18. Midday shadows and shafts of light stretched out across a tufted grass and rock terrain, falling upon a wiggling 15-foot long caterpillar, a 19-foot praying mantis, two 11-foot battling rhinoceros beetles, a giant walking stick and a 13-foot locust spreading its wings to take flight.

Wide-eyed kids sidled closer to their parents and a collective “oooooh” swelled in the room when the praying mantis reared up, displaying the behavior that causes its prey to freeze to avoid being eaten. These animatronic wonders would have felt at home with Buffalo-born

James Whitmore on the set of the giant ant movie “Them!”

Grabbing a bite

We had plenty of time to grab dinner before the evening laser shows, so we headed to the Pomodoro Grill and Wine Bar on University Avenue. Huge red heating pipes snake across the ceiling of this converted warehouse space, and an open kitchen spans the back of the interior dining area.

The hostess seated us on a mezzanine, overlooking the kitchen, from which we could watch flames dance in the open hearth of a signature wood-burning pizza oven. Our waiter explained that all the soups, dressings, spreads and sauces are made from scratch right in that kitchen, as is the pasta. Organic ingredients and local produce also enhance the dishes prepared here, and the asiago cheese, imported from Italy, liberally peppers many of the dishes.

With five of us eating, we enjoyed quite a potpourri of flavors. I loved my Linguine Limone, tender pasta generously laden with artichokes, asparagus, sundried tomatoes, pine nuts and asiago cheese in a light olive oil and lemon sauce. It couldn’t have been more delicately seasoned or more delicious. The Puttanesca con Penne also garnered rave reviews for the perfect spiciness of the red sauce. The tender and crispy crust on the traditional pizza, topped with mozzarella and pepperoni, made that dish a hit as well.

The service here was as top notch as the food and the atmosphere. We lingered longer than usual, watching the chefs prepare the food and chatting with

our friends and our waiter.

Lasers and music

From Pomodoro, we made our way to the 65-foot high, domed planetarium for the laser shows. My husband, Bob, and I were in for both the Beatles show at 9 p. m. and Pink Floyd at 10 p. m. We purchased tickets and, in a stroke of luck, Bob thought to ask the location of “the best seats in the house.” We also purchased the special Fireworks Glasses for $2 apiece before making our way to the last row of the auditorium in front of the laser control panel.

The lights dimmed and we plunged headfirst into “Magical Mystery Tour,” an explosion of sound and color: whirls of red and blue mixed with golden helix- shapes, all pulsing to the familiar Beatles beat. The “Tour” led us through “Twist and Shout” and on to a medley of early bubblegum hits and, eventually, into the more placid “Across the Universe.” And the universe here? Starscapes and clouds, compliments of a huge star projector, float behind falling specks of laser-red rain and strings of light in kaleidoscope patterns vibrate in front of a Milky Way swirl. The show ends, appropriately enough, with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” — and, yes, we did enjoy the show.

The program of Pink Floyd music, a perfect medium for the fusion of light, sound and image, opened with “Speak To Me/Breathe” from “Dark Side of the Moon.” Unlike the Beatles medleys, the Floyd tunes meshed seamlessly just as they do on the album. It was easy to be lulled into a dreamy world of color and motion, punctuated by the swell of alarms and ticking clocks in “Time” and cash register rhythms in “Money.” Figures of clocks, dollar bills, and dropping coins floated above us, ultimately cranking us into the rotating gears of “Welcome to the Machine” — art imitating life. The show wouldn’t have been complete without the standard, “Another Brick in the Wall,” with its dark weblike imagery giving way to “Run Like Hell” and flashes of brilliant yellows, greens and — of course — pinks.

Both shows left us feeling upbeat and convinced that, contrary to what you might have heard, you don’t even need a preshow glass of wine to enjoy the beauty of art that sparks imagination by appealing to our most rudimentary sense of color, form and sound.

Everyday life can certainly dull the imagination. But spending a day being a kid again at the Rochester Museum and Science Center and Strasenburgh Planetarium can get you back in touch with that slumbering sense of wonder so easily lost in our work-a-day world. Hey, you may even want to take the kids along.

If you go

Rochester Museum and Science Center, 657 East Ave, Rochester;

www.rmsc.org

. Opening Jan. 24 is “GPS Adventures,” where visitors can navigate a life-sized maze. Admission: $8-$10. Strasenburgh Planetarium, 657 East Ave, Rochester;

www.rmsc.org

. Admission: $9 for one show; Beatles and Pink Floyd Laser shows, Saturdays at 9 and 10 p. m. through January; Led Zeppelin and Dave Matthews laser shows, every Saturday evening in February. Films include “Saturday Sun, Moon, & Stars,” “Wonders of Orion” and “Dinosaurs Alive.” Pomodoro Grill and Wine Bar, 1290 University Ave., Rochester;

www.ThePomodoroGrill.com

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