Accessible Circuit
The Interactive Interface Accessible Circuit consists of a permanent exhibit at the Mines and Metal Museum – MM Gerdau, including the Wise Stones interactive interfaces and other previously existent accessible museum collections. Please check below the visitor’s guide, listed by floor, having in mind that the institution has an accessible elevator.
Liberdade Square Floor – (First Floor, Street Level)
Liberdade Square’s Sensory Model
Liberdade (Liberty) Square, where the Mines and Metal Museum – MM Gerdau is located, lies in the very heart of the city of Belo Horizonte, and is the city’s most important square since the foundation of the new state capital in 1897. The square’s sensory model has Braille subtitles, mobile parts and varied textures that help the visitor in the identification of gardens, fountains, bandstand, pedestrian crossings, statues, streets and alleys.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors and partial for hearing-impaired visitors (only Portuguese subtitles).
Wise Stones Interactive Interface: Talc
This display allows the visitor to handle three mineral samples. When the button corresponding to the sample to be explored is pressed, a video is triggered on the screen, presenting enlarged images of the sample’s details, animations, audio narrations, texts in Portuguese and a sign language translation. Learn, at this interactive interface, the scientific information, texture characteristics and curiosities about talc, galena and rhodonite.
Accessibility: Complete for physically impaired visitors.
Quartz Druse
A “druse” consists of an irregular grouping of crystals, taking some amazing forms. This sample of quartz druse (SiO2) was collected at Serra do Cipó, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It weighs 1,120 lb., and both its size and varied textures are impressive. Contrary to what it may seem, the crystals’ smooth facets formed naturally, without any form of artificial cut. Visitors have permission to touch the druse.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors and partial for hearing-impaired visitors (only Portuguese subtitles).
Djalma Guimarães Mineral Collection’s films and audio recordings
This exhibit has 430 items, including mineral samples, gems and meteorites. In this gallery, visitors have access to 20 windows containing films and audio recordings, in which they can learn about physical/chemical properties and curiosities about the items. Two items can also be touched by the visitors, one quartz (SiO2) sample collected in the city of Aimorés (MG, Brazil) and the great Bocaiúva meteorite, found in the homonymous city (MG, Brazil) in 1961.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors and partial for hearing-impaired visitors (only Portuguese subtitles). Assistance to visually impaired visitors is recommended in their transit from one interactive window to another.
Mines Floor – 2nd Floor
Wise Stones Interactive Interface: Gibbsite
This display allows the visitor to handle three mineral samples. When the button corresponding to the sample to be explored is pressed, a video is triggered on the screen, presenting enlarged images of the sample’s details, animations, audio narrations, texts in Portuguese and a sign language translation. Learn, at this interactive interface, the scientific information, texture characteristics and curiosities about magnesite, gibbsite and baryte.
Accessibility: Complete for physically impaired visitors.
Limestone mine’s film and audio recordings
In the films and audio recordings of this interactive interface, Fernão Dias, a bandeirante from the 17th century, retells the story about the discovery of limestone in the state of Minas Gerais. It presents curiosities and the uses of limestone, composed by calcite, the most important ingredient in the manufacture of cement. Audio/video duration: 6 minutes.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors, but not accessible to hearing-impaired visitors (without Portuguese subtitles and sign language translation).
Bauxite (aluminum ore) mine films and audio recordings
Aluminum is among the world’s most consumed metals, and Brazil is one of its most important producers. This display consists of a wheel of screens and audio narrations, by which the visitor immerges into the metal’s life cycle, involving its extraction, transformation and recycling. Learn some amazing curiosities about the most abundant metal on the earth’s surface! Audio/video duration: 7 minutes.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors and partial for hearing-impaired visitors (only Portuguese subtitles). Assistance to visually impaired visitors is recommended for a safe positioning at the center of the immersive audio wheel.
Audio Mirages
This exhibit presents optical illusions of some minerals, while the visitor enjoys the poem “O Romanceiro da Inconfidência” (Cecília Meireles), in the voice of Fernanda Takai.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors and partial for hearing-impaired visitors (only Portuguese subtitles, poem in audio format only).
Metal Floor – 3rd Floor
Sculpture: Sharp Tongue
Língua Afiada (Sharp Tongue), a metallic sculpture with surprisingly large dimensions, occupies great part of one of the museum’s halls. The visitor can better understand this magnificent sculpture’s proportions by means of a tactile model.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors and partial for hearing-impaired visitors (only Portuguese subtitles).
Wise Stones Interactive Interface: Quartz
This display allows the visitor to handle two mineral samples. When the button corresponding to the sample to be explored is pressed, a video is triggered on the screen, presenting enlarged images of the sample’s details, animations, audio narrations, texts in Portuguese and a sign language translation. Learn, at this interactive interface, the scientific information, texture characteristics and curiosities about microcline and quartz.
Accessibility: Complete for physically impaired visitors.
Mendeleev and the Periodic Table film
This film presents the Periodic Table, in a video narrated by Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), who retells his story and talks about the creation of that table in the 19th century. Metallic tubes project the chemical elements’ symbols on the floor, next to the bench in front of the screen. Audio/video duration: 5 minutes.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors, but not accessible to hearing-impaired visitors (without Portuguese subtitles and sign language translation).
Wise Stones Interactive Interface: Fossilized Wood
This display allows the visitor to handle five mineral samples: silex, muscovite, aquamarine, hematite and fossilized wood. Whenever a sample is lifted up, enlarged images, texts and an audio recording provide curiosities and physical characteristics of that item, pointing out aspects of its texture. This is also possible to handle two simultaneous samples, triggering comparative data about them. The most important item here is fossilized wood, which, one day, was a piece of wood, but over time underwent a fossilization process, transforming it into a mineral. The bark’s and the fibers’ texture, combined with the mineral’s coldness, produce touch-provoking sensations.
Accessibility: Complete for physically and visually impaired visitors and partial for hearing-impaired visitors (without sign language translation). Mediated activity, to be scheduled with the MM Gerdau’s educative section.
