Kids too tough for NY museum's $145,000 F-16 exhibit

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - A New York museum's $145,000 fighter jet exhibit apparently isn't tougher than a sixth-grader.

Officials at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse say the Fighting Falcon F-16 jet exhibit has broken several times since opening in January.

Exhibit Manager Peter Plumley says the hands-on display has had problems caused by the over-exuberance of its target audience: students in grades six through eight.

The F-16 exhibit features a one-fifth-scale model of a fighter that can be made to dip and dive using a joystick in a full-scale cockpit placed behind the model.

Plumley says the exhibit's designer is expected to arrive soon from Washington state to replace the broken joystick with one expected to hold up better.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.