Museum of Science and Industry

MSI’S NEW APP AND ONLINE GAME BRING FUN TWIST TO NUTRITION AND PHYSIOLOGY FOR THE NEW YEAR

CHICAGO (January 9, 2013)—Explore a healthy 2013—MSI-style! From taking the “Spinach Samurai” challenge, to helping a lost soul escape the clutches of a wolf with the power of his own body, the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) has new digital content that offers fun and unique ways to learn about nutrition and physiology.

“The Museum’s digital offerings build upon everything MSI does as a leader in science learning to engage people, particularly youth, in a completely new way,” said MSI’s Director of Digital Media Steven Beasley. “We aim to engage youth with compelling and relevant science whenever and wherever they are through digital media and mobile devices that have revolutionized how they learn, live, play and interact.”

The Museum’s most recent free new releases—the Chew or Die food challenge app and the
online game Code Fred: Survival Mode—are geared towards kids, teens and classrooms and designed to complement MSI’s YOU! The Experience exhibit, which focuses on human health and wellness.

Chew or Die, A New MSI App

Mouths crammed with hot dogs. Pie-smeared faces. These are the less-than-savory images that "competitive eating" conjures. But MSI's new mobile app will change that! Download Chew or Die and you can start challenging your friends—and yourself—to eat healthier and broaden your food horizons.

Chew or Die is a quirky food challenge app that encourages users to make small changes to their daily food choices. Pick a food challenge in the app—such as “Spinach Samurai” or “Produce Throwdown”—and come up with a dish that fulfills that challenge. This could mean anything from finding an unusual new way to eat raw spinach to tracking down a mystery fruit. Then, snap a picture of your food with your mobile device and share it in the app. Others will see streams of your submitted food photos and rate whether your plates successfully fulfilled the challenge; they can also award bonuses for attributes like portion size, food choice and creativity.

“Chew or Die encourages users to be more conscious of their daily food choices without judging
what is “healthy,” said MSI’s director of digital media Steven Beasley. “Chew or Die also taps into the social nature of eating; by sharing food choices with our friends and the world, users can become more aware of the personal and environmental backgrounds which influence how we eat.”

Chew or Die is available for free on iOS and Android. Visit www.msichicago.org/chewordie.

Code Fred: Survival Mode, A New Online Game

Have you ever stopped to think about what keeps you breathing, or how information travels from your senses to your brain instantly, or any of the other amazing things that constantly happen to keep you alive? A new online game from MSI, Code Fred: Survival Mode, helps kids, families and students learn more about the human body and the incredible phenomena that are happening within it—all the time.

Players jump inside the body and participate in physiological processes to help the main character, Fred, survive as he’s being chased through the woods by a wolf. Users have to send adrenaline to help Fred run faster, build a blood clot to help heal an injury, and even fight bacteria invaders! Each of these mini games helps Fred run a little farther and buys the player more time. But if the player loses any of these mini games, Fred meets his demise.

“The goal of the online game is to show how the body’s systems are interdependent and constantly communicating. Running for your life involves the circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems all working together,” said Beasley. “This game does not look like a biology textbook; we hope that by playing it, users will have a sense of awe at the complexity of the body as a unified system.”

While the game was designed to appeal to individual users, it can also be used in a classroom to teach specific content. Code Fred: Survival Mode is available for free at http://www.msichicago.org/code-fred.

Other Digital Offerings

Chew or Die and Code Fred join the below collection of free digital content related to YOU! The Experience:

Would You Eat That?, online game: Users try to identify the ingredients inside various popular packaged foods—including soda and fruit drinks, frozen apple pie, pudding, instant oatmeal and even dog food! Players choose from a list of ingredients—from acesulfame K and maltodextrin to sucralose and yellow #5—to pick the four ingredients they think are in each food. After selections are made, they “mix” them to see if they’ve come up with the right recipe!

Virtual Heart, iPad app: Featuring the same highly realistic visual elements as the Giant Heart in YOU!, this app lets users explore multiple views of the beating human heart: an external view and three internal views that realistically depict the heart’s valves, blood flow and electrical system. Users can also change the pulse of the heart to beat faster or slower.

Make Room for Baby, online interactive: Users can explore the monthly impact on an expectant mother’s body as she adjusts mentally and physically to the changes inside her.

All of the above content can be found on the Museum’s website at www.msichicago.org/apps.

ABOUT YOU! THE EXPERIENCE
YOU! The Experience is a dramatic and unprecedented 15,000-square-foot permanent exhibit that celebrates the body, mind and spirit—and explores personal health and well-being. The exhibit, which opened at MSI in 2009,  showcases the extraordinary workings of our bodies, the choices we make, the environment in which we live, and the role of medical technology.

The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) offers thousands of fun and interactive exhibits and one-of-a-kind, world-class experiences to inspire the inventive genius in everyone. Through its Center for the Advancement of Science Education, MSI also aspires to a larger vision: to inspire and motivate children to achieve their full potential in science, technology, medicine and engineering. Come visit and find your inspiration! MSI is open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, and regular hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Museum is supported in part through the generosity of the people of Chicago through the Chicago Park District. For more information, find MSI online at msichicago.org or call (773) 684-1414 or (800) GO-TO-MSI outside of the Chicago area.

Press Materials

• Chew or Die, Code Fred Press Release (PDF)

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