I've been worrying lately about kids, science and technology -- and what that means for the future of Michigan.

Here's why. To survive, we have to replace a brawn-based, one-size-fits-all manufacturing economy with a brain-based, value-added economic model. If our kids don't get interested in science, technology and math, we won't have anybody around to drive this transition to a better economy for us all.

And even though the new, much tougher state K-12 school curriculum was adopted last month, it won't fully take effect before the kids who will be graduating from high school in 2011.

Plus, many of today's kids are just not interested in their courses in science and math ... and making them required courses may not change very much. As the old saying goes ... you can lead a horse to water, but learning quadratic equations is something else.

So for all those reasons, I joined my old friend Bob Anthony in visiting the New Detroit Science Center in downtown Detroit, on Warren Avenue, not far from the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Now retired from Pricewaterhouse-Coopers and vice chairman of the Science Center, Bob is one of those people whose passionate volunteering makes Michigan a far better place.

It was a beautiful spring day, so we drove with the top down and parked in a lot just behind the DIA. The Science Center's bright crimson bricks glowed in the sun as we walked in to a modern building jam-packed with noisy, interested, energetic kids.

Some were sitting wide-eyed at a demonstration of how the Venturi principle kept balls levitating in space on a column of rising air. Others were poking at interactive exhibits. Some were eating lunch in a school group, while others were dashing about in the happily intent way kids have.

But they were all clearly learning -- and having fun. The newly expanded Science Center offers 111,000 square feet of scientific exploration, including exhibit halls, auditoriums and an IMAX dome theater. It's the largest and most popular place for informal science and technology education in Michigan.

The mission is straightforward: To inspire children and their families to discover, explore and appreciate science, technology and engineering in a dynamic and fun learning environment.

If you last visited the Center before 2001, it isn't the same place. It has completed a $30 million renovation and expansion, and has since then has attracted more than 1.3 million visitors.

Last year, nearly half of all visitors were children who came with school or other groups.

The total annual budget is a bit more than $5 million, with about half coming from admission fees and half from contributions, mostly from the auto companies and various southeastern Michigan foundations.

Kevin Prihod, the Center's energetic CEO, started with General Motors Corp. as an industrial engineer back in 1979. He is clear about the mission ... and the stakes: "As a society, we are facing a crisis in math, science and engineering. Our kids increasingly are tuning this stuff out. If we can excite and inspire kids, especially young ones, to these fields we will have made an enormous difference in our future."

As Bob and I walked around, we ran into a family from Ohio visiting Detroit on the kids' spring break. They were enjoying Detroit and having a great time at the Science Center. One daughter, eyes shining, offered that she'd love to be an astronaut or an engineer.

I wondered how that family would maintain their daughter's interest and nurture it long after their visit. The Science Center has a nifty tip sheet for parents on exactly that point:

* Build their math skills. Buy them a calculator to carry. Have them calculate the tip at a restaurant or guess how many gallons of gas a car will need (and cost!) the next time you stop at the pump.

* Foster their inquisitiveness. Ask them to replace the batteries in a flashlight or smoke detector. Help them take apart a toy, a pen, a telephone or small appliance.

* Challenge them to come up with a better design for products they see every day -- a light bulb, a coffee maker, a skateboard, stoplights. Take them on a factory tour to see how something is built.

When I was young, my interest in science was initially charged by my uncle, a physician who took me to his office and helped me stain my blood sample to diagnose my appendicitis. In high school, our physicist next-door neighbor gave me a summer job in his lab.

My professional interests later went in another direction, but many others who went on to a career in science or engineering had similar childhood experiences. Science and technology should only not be abstract; they need to be part of the texture of everyday life.

The things the Science Center is doing make precisely this point. The Center is one of those enormously valuable institutions that make life in Michigan worth living -- and yet are not nearly as well-known as they should be.

If you're a parent or an uncle or merely a friend and want to make a difference in a kid's life one afternoon, I can't imagine anything more worthwhile -- and fun -- than a trip to the Science Center. It just might be a life-changing experience.

And by the way ... You'll enjoy it, too.