Vancouver Date Idea: Catch a Spy at Science World’s Top Secret Exhibition

With the weather this weekend calling for rain, a fun indoor date might be in the cards for you and your sweetie. This date idea is perfect if you and your date like puzzles, testing out your logic and problem solving skills, and having a laugh together. If so, the new exhibition at Science World is just the thing for the two of you!

Top Secret: License to Spy is a touring exhibition from Perth, Australia, which opened this month and runs until September 5, 2016. During a chat at the exhibition, curator Brian Anderson says that “Top Secret” is about “spy technology,” but, even more importantly, “looking at the process of science that involves trying something and looking for evidence.” He says the exhibit should take about 45 minutes to 1 hour to complete. In other words, it’s a fairly short date activity.

Basically, the exhibition places you and your date in the roles of secret agents. Once you arrive at the entrance, you’ll pick up your Spy File clue card (there is an adult and a junior version). On its first page, you’ll find the following mission: “the world’s most powerful computer chip has been stolen. Your mission is to find out who stole it and why.” You’ll find six suspects listed, all with backgrounds that are related to high-tech espionage. Hmmm… Which of them did it?

Once inside, you and your date will visit numerous stations, with a task to complete at each. Anderson says that about 60% of these stations are directly related to the mission, and the other 40% teach you cool stuff about spy technology. You don’t have to complete them in sequential order, and the clues revealed at each overlap, so don’t stress if you get stumped on one of them.

The dozen tasks themselves aren’t overly difficult, but super interactive and enjoyable. You’ll perform a phone tap, play with satellite coordinates, try to crack a password, and use night vision goggles to see in the dark. One of my favourites involves trying to unlock a safe by turning wheels and watching how they affect the internal mechanisms of the lock.

Another impressive tech-y one has visitors directing a laser beam at a glass window in order to pick up sound wave vibrations from a conversation happening behind the window. The vibrations are converted to sound that you can then listen to.

You and your date can really get your geek on in the “Code Room” where you’ll face seven different code breaking challenges, ranging from reading messages with the help of a mirror, to decoding a pigpen cipher (a geometric simple substitution cipher).

As you gradually get closer to completing your mission, the two of you will also play (and be goofy) with other spy technology, like a voice disguising machine and the crowd popular “laser matrix” where you’ll try to avoid touching intersecting laser beams.

Once you feel you’re done, the two of you can head to the debriefing room to find out whether you’ve correctly solved the mystery.

Overall, Top Secret is a great way to bond together, and learn something in the process. If you’re interested in visiting at a kid-free time, Science World is hosting Science World After Dark on June 17, from 7pm to 10pm (doors open at 5:30pm for those watching the OMNIMAX film). Tickets are available on-line.