Skip to content

Science Museum Blog

The things and objects of history are important because they provide a tangible connection to the past. Seeing, or better yet holding and touching, the stuff that generations now dead made and worked with enlivens history, shucking us from the present and its endless clamour for our attention. The Hidden Structures exhibition at the Science Museum trips us into the history of X-ray crystallography with a small but intriguing display of objects from the 1940s through to the 1970s. The […]

The museum’s plans to create a £4 million Media Space – a showcase for photography, visual media, technology and science – were outlined a few days ago to leading figures in drama, film and the arts, from Jenny Agutter and Imogen Stubbs to Terry Gilliam and Ben Okri. Ian Blatchford, director of the Science Museum Group, give an overview of how the new venture will open on the second floor of the museum this September to display some of the finest collections on the planet […]

In Emily’s second post, find out about one of her favourite art pieces in the Science Museum Sitting there, watching Listening Post, I was strangely mesmerised. The computer synthesised voices read out posts in different, monotonic keys, creating a calm chorus of gentle noise. I was completely hypnotised and probably could have sat there for hours…  Created by artists Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, Listening Post is an art project which came to the museum in 2003. It displays small […]

The unpredictable British weather has had a big impact on our lives already this year. So, as we emerge from the April showers, what better theme for a Lates evening is there than the science of climate change?

This blog post was written by Emily to share her thoughts on her placement at the Science Museum I came to the Science Museum for a two week work experience placement and was surprised at how much there was going on! Going to a museum for a school trip, or even for a day out with my family, I’m used to seeing people in the Learning department, working at the café and in the shop but being behind the scenes, […]

Have you ever wondered how you clean your teeth in space? It’s not a problem for most of us, but for the six astronauts orbiting above us in the International Space Station, even simple tasks can be challenging in microgravity.

How many people do you know that have had a cataracts operation? Cataract (the clouding of the lens of the eye) have been operated on for hundreds of years. One of the earliest operations was couching – pushing the clouded lens out of the way to restore some vision. By the 1740s, methods were developed to remove the lens completely. However it wasn’t until the 1940s, that a successful artificial alternative to the eye’s lens was found, the intra-ocular lens. While working […]