When video games came along, marbles, jacks and hopscotch got replaced with joysticks and computer-generated imagery.

Instead of hunching over to shoot marbles, kids sit inside in air-conditioned homes as mind-blitzing video games such as “Spider-Man Friend or Foe,” “Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey” and “Speed Racer,” to name a few, dance across TV screens.

Staff Photo by John Rawlston
Eleven-year-old Andrew Tallent, right, attempts to construct a maze to pass a marble through using a variety of tubing and pegs at the Creative Discovery Science Theatre at Northgate on Tuesday with the help of staff members Casey Dearborn, left, and Lindsay Wright. The facility is hosting a marble-related event beginning Friday.

But the Creative Discovery Museum wants to revive marbles. The museum’s Science Theatre at Northgate Mall is unveiling a new exhibit showing the centuries-old game as an educational tool, but it also is meant to revive an activity that’s been on the decline for years, organizers say.

“I remember playing with marbles when I was a child, but I realized that my adult sons had never had the same experience, so I wanted to share the game with a new generation,” said Karen Dewhirst, the theater’s manager.

The theater will unveil the exhibit Friday and invites the public to come play, Ms. Dewhirst said.

Using a 44-foot-long pegboard on the wall, children will be offered the chance to make their own marble maze to see how slowly they can make a marble roll from four feet up the wall into a bucket on the floor.

They also can make marbles, learn about the energy, forces and motion of marbles, and try to win a bag of them by hunting for hidden marbles, said Rich Bailey, a Creative Discovery spokesman.

Mr. Dewhirst said the game has educational value because it teaches concepts such as force, kinetic and potential energy and other concepts from physics and illustrates them in an activity that can be played anywhere.

The museum is bringing in a marble expert and two top-notch marble-shooting champions for the opening night of “Marble Mania.”

Shawn Hughes, organizer for the annual National Rolley Hole Marbles Championship, will be in the theater to teach marbling techniques and to hold a tournament. His game, Ringer, has rules similar to pool, he said. His annual championship, held at Standing Stone State Park in Hilham, Tenn., is known as the “Super Bowl of Marbles,” he said.

“The people that participate in the tournament are known as the world’s best marble shooters,” Mr. Hughes said. “The tournament and events like those in Chattanooga are meant to keep the interest in marbles alive.”

Mr. Hughes said marbles is “a great activity that takes some concentration and patience. We have participants from 14 to 60 at our annual championship. It’s pretty cheap to get started, and it requires some thinking.”

The new exhibit is part of the Science Theatre’s renovation of the now-vacant movie theater space at Northgate Mall, Ms. Dewhirst said.

The space where the marble exhibit is housed once was used for the museum’s laser theater, but curtains and seating have been removed and replaced with new lighting and bright colors, officials said.

In the first phase of renovating the entire laser theater, half the angled floor has been leveled and filled with lab tables for hands-on activities, they said.

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