What’s the connection between the Great British Bake Off and nineteenth-century chef Alexis Soyer? Well, I guess the blog title gives it away: food consumed – not literally – but as public spectacle. Outside of the more intimate settings of our home kitchens, the return of Bake Off to our TV screens shows that there is a real appetite for what is frankly (light entertainment) food porn watched by millions. In Bake Off a series of amateur bakers are challenged by […]
Later this year, we launch Mathematics: The Winton Gallery. Jessica Bradford explores how we make this sometimes divisive subject engaging for our visitors.
Astronauts Tim Peake and Tim Kopra wowed hundreds of school children with tales from the International Space Station (ISS) on the same day the European Space Agency (ESA) attempted to land the Schiaparelli module on Mars.
Eric – a 2m tall working replica of one of the world’s first robots – is now on display in the Science Museum.
It may look like a humble glass jar, but this embryo incubator was used in the creation of the world’s first ‘test-tube babies’.
The Science Museum’s Head of Communications, Peter Dickinson, responds to concerns raised about an image used in the marketing campaign for our new interactive gallery. Wonderlab: The Statoil Gallery is extraordinary; it is a gallery designed with the sophistication to impress one of the UK’s most respected architecture critics, the Observer’s Rowan Moore, while at the same time prompting Time Out to write: “If Stephen Hawking and Willy Wonka designed the ultimate science playground then it might go a little […]
The quest for artificial intelligence is gathering pace, with research groups worldwide in both universities and industry making huge advances in the development of sophisticated neural networks – inspired by the architecture of the brain – that may one day give computers the capacity for independent thought. Recent developments in machine learning and the proliferation of smart devices interconnected via a global high-speed network are already starting to enable far greater interaction between machines and information – what many call […]
With the museum’s Director of External Affairs, Roger Highfield, and Prof Ed Dougherty of Texas A&M, Peter Coveney of University College London has written a critique of the blind use of big data in biology. Here Prof Coveney sums up their paper. Visit the Our Lives in Data exhibition in the Science Museum’s Wellcome Wing and you will see a section on the revolution in genetics. Today it is cheaper than ever to read a person’s entire genetic code (genome), […]
When Wonderlab: The Statoil Gallery opens in October 2016, we will extend our reach beyond traditional museum audiences with a series of important charity partnerships. Tom O’Leary explains more.
Hanging at the centre of Mathematics: The Winton Gallery is the Handley Page ‘Gugnunc’, an experimental aeroplane built in 1929. Curator David Rooney explores the story of this eloquent, striking and powerful embodiment of the mathematics of risk.
Collections Assistant Dominique Russell describes the process of cleaning and preparing the incredible Elliott 401 computer to go on display.
It’s September again and for students all over it’s time to think ahead to the new academic year. We in the Learning Support Team have also shined our shoes and restocked our pencil cases ready to welcome half a million education group visitors to the Science Museum this year. Our main role is to give advice and plan visits to the Museum for all education groups from nurseries, schools and university students, to Scouts and Brownies as well as booking […]