Amid the clunking and shuffling of wooden blocks, the zipping of rope through metal sockets and the occasional ding of nails colliding, 10-year-old cousins Katherine Hunton and Sierra Mauldin had their hands full.

The pair weren't building a new Rube Goldberg device or a hyperintelligent robotic flying bat — although it wouldn't be a huge surprise to find some of the younger citizens of Los Alamos working on those gadgets.

Instead, the two were learning to think like scientists, through an interactive Brain Teasers exhibit at the city's Bradbury Museum.

"I'm trying to do this one," Katherine said intently, shuffling a series of blue wooden blocks in an attempt to make them fit into a tight pattern. "You have to figure out how to put the shapes together."

At a bench next to Katherine, Sierra pondered a puzzle in which you have to manipulate several multicolored hexagon blocks into a specific pattern.

"It's tricky," Sierra said. "But when you get it, you feel an accomplishment."

Puzzles may seem like time suckers, designed solely to entertain, but actually they can build critical-thinking skills that people like scientists use every day, said Gordon McDonough, the museum's science educator.

"The solutions are of no use to anybody, actually, but the solving of it is," McDonough said. "The thought process keeps the brain agile. And if you think about Los Alamos National Laboratory, the scientists there are solving puzzles all the time."

The exhibit, which runs through March 31, is on loan to the museum from Albuquerque's Explora museum. It features more than a dozen hands-on brain-twisting puzzles that require different scientific principles to solve.

"This one is a topology puzzle," McDonough said, pointing out one in which a rope is twisted along a wooden structure and through three wood and metal holes. "Topology is a type of math that looks at the shape of things and how they occupy space."

The goal is to knot and unknot the rope in the center hole, which at first seems impossible.

"I looked at it and I saw the hole and I thought, 'oh, I can do that,' " McDonough said, noting that the rope is actually folded through the central hole. "Topologists would say the rope doesn't go through the hole at all, because it comes back out."

With a few flashy moves and some pushing and pulling, McDonough then freed the rope of its central knot.

There are probably as many types of puzzles as there are fields of science and technology. But some of the main ones in the exhibit use topology, arithmetic, geometry and physics.

Topology is McDonough's favorite, he added.

"Topologists are people who say a doughnut is the same shape as a coffee cup," McDonough said, then paused.

"One central hole," he added.

The puzzles aren't just popular with kids, either. Adults who visit the museum, which is operated by LANL, also tend to get sucked in — some for several hours, McDonough said.

Bill Dodlinger, 54, is visiting Santa Fe with his family for the holidays, and took them for a trip to the museum on Monday. Dodlinger said he doesn't really consider himself a puzzle guy, but after visiting the exhibit he can see the draw.

"I'm just trying not to be embarrassed here," he said with a laugh, trying to manipulate several different-shaped wooden blocks so they would fit in a rectangular container. "My wife, she's the puzzle expert."

The family spent several hours at the exhibit with kids Kristen, 12, and Kevin, 14, coming up with some creative solutions to some of the harder ones that baffled their parents.

Still, as an avid puzzle doer, McDonough added that it's important to not tell anybody how to solve a puzzle — although dropping a couple of hints is probably OK.

"When I think about the value of solving the puzzle yourself, there's a lesson from the lab there," McDonough said. "The Russians stole the bomb after World War II, but they didn't go through the process of making it themselves. So they didn't get the computers or that technology out of it, which scientists here had to create to solve the puzzle of the bomb. We got all that benefit and they didn't."

Once you become a fan of the puzzle, you start to see them all around you, he added.

"Life is puzzles," McDonough said. "We've been doing puzzles since we first started seeking prey as a species. As long as people have been trying to figure out things like the best way to sneak around animals, we've been doing puzzles."

Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.

IF YOU GO

Admission to the Bradbury Museum, located at 15th Street and Central Avenue in Los Alamos, is free. For more information about the Brain Teasers exhibit, visit www.lanl.gov/museum online, or call 667-4444.