The Lung Express is an exciting encouragement for kids to take an interest in their lungs. "We know the lungs are an incredible organ; the question is how do you communicate that to the world—especially to kids aged 7 to 12?" says Association CEO Janie Davis.

"We teamed up with the best experts we could find, and they've embraced this vision with remarkable originality," says Davis. "We believe that our visitors will go from taking an interest to actually making healthier choices that will affect their environment and their future."

Beginning with a lively logo created by Loren Kramer of San Diego's Kramer Design, the Lung Express offered a new look for the lungs. His sweeping coloration of the Lung Express exterior set the tone for a fantastic interior treatment which was selected by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). Brilliant pinks, oranges, and reds give the visitor a sense of being inside the tissue of a healthy lung.

"In OMSI, we found a world of experience in creating mobile exhibits and displays of the human body," Davis says. "They could also test ideas in their Portland museum, which covers 200,000 square feet of space."

According to John Andrew, the head of OMSI's mobile exhibit design department, the Lung Express passed its acid test with flying colors on June 15. "We opened the Lung Express for groups of kids around age 7, and they chose to stay inside," Andrew reports. "They were interested, absolutely. Several of the kids spent as much as an hour in it."

In OMSI, the Association found a well-prepared collaborator. One of a handful of institutions that creates mobile museum exhibits—in addition to operating its own facility in Portland comprised of Omnimax Theater, Planetarium, exploratory exhibits, and activity centers devoted to computers and life sciences—OMSI had recently tried out a series of exhibits focused on human organs including the lungs. But no one had ever asked them to transform a bus into an interactive display floor.

"We needed excitement, interactive exhibits, a feeling of being inside the lungs," Davis says. "We also got more specific. We asked for exhibits that would describe the mechanics of the lungs, what their role is in human health, and what smoking or air pollution will do to them."

Based on the prototypes it had already tested, OMSI created a series of interactive displays, allowing visitors to turn a crank to move cilia, pump a lever to simulate the action of the diaphragm, push plungers to experience different levels of breathing difficulty, and more.

OMSI also found a way to satisfy the Association's demand for a feeling of immersion by commissioning artist/sculptor Jonquil LeMaster to create a walk-through pair of lungs that use strategic cutaways to show tissues, bone, and airways.

LeMaster has worked for the San Diego Zoo, the Bronx Zoo, and other parks and attractions. "This has been a wonderful and incredible experience for me," LeMaster says. "I think the OMSI staff hired me because I have built lovely trees and we saw the bronchial Ôtree' as the most phenomenal aspect of the lung. Because I love trees of all kinds and am completely entranced by the sameness in the systems of tree branching, lightning, and water sheds, for instance, the lung delighted me when I focused on the fact that inside us, too, is this fantastic system."

The walk-through lung sculpture is a masterpiece of anatomical rendering that leaves kids no doubt as to the nature and placement of the lungs. Inside the Lung Express, they dominate the space and establish a sense of the journey, according to OMSI's Shane Crunchie, who masterminded the interior layout and exhibit designs.

"You aren't drawn to the back of the bus when you get on. We tried to break up the space," Crunchie told fellow team members during the planning stages. "After the encounter with the lungs, the visitor enters a more open space, a place to look around at several exhibits and choose what to do next."

If the tests at OMSI are an indication, the Lung Express visitors will choose to sample and enjoy many of the exhibits before they step off the bus (to the sound, incidentally, of a cough, a sneeze, or other exhalation).

But getting off the Lung Express is not the end of the experience. "We have developed a number of lab activities and interactive games to do outside the Lung Express, too," says Davis. Outside the Lung Express, kids can role-play the lung's exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen, chart the surface area of the lung, simulate an asthma episode, and more.