The National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky is marking the second anniversary of a sinkhole collapse with a new multimedia exhibit.
The “Corvette Cave-In” installation opens Feb. 12, two years to the day that a sinkhole opened up beneath the museum and swallowed eight classic cars.
National Corvette Museum Education Coordinator Kellie Steen says one part of the exhibit gives visitors a chance to experience the region’s karst geography, where limestone creates underground streams, caverns and sinkholes.
The installation gives visitors a virtual experience of walking into a virtual cave and experiencing a collapse like the one that caused the sinkhole.
“It’s where you go into a mini cave, and it feels like you’re standing in our cave and then there’s a virtual simulation of a collapse,” says Steen. “There’s rocks falling down, virtual rocks, falling down the walls, and lots of noise, and you hear the dripping of the cave at the beginning.”
Steen says the exhibit provides lessons geared to third and fourth grade curriculum in Kentucky schools.
“It’s video. Lots of hands-on things. There’s a section where there’s a claw and you can pretend you’re getting the cars out of the sinkhole, almost like an Xbox game or something like that.”
The exhibit examines the science that caused the sinkhole and the engineering used for the recovery of the classic Corvettes.
The sinkhole attracted international attention and led to record numbers of visitors to the Corvette Museum.