Whenever I go to London by train I see the civil engineering works outside Paddington Station for the new Crossrail link. There is a big hole ready to take the giant German-made tunnelling machines which will soon start work boring the Crossrail tunnels under London. These amazing pieces of engineering are often scrapped after their job is done. They are far too large to fit in any museum, so we have a model of the similar machines used to bore the Channel Tunnel in the 1990s. However, at our Large Object store at […]
One of the best parts of a curator’s job is collecting new objects. It can sometimes feel like a daunting task but occasionally serendipitous circumstances lead to a great acquisition. A member of staff from GE Healthcare was visiting the Science and Art of Medicine gallery of the 5th floor of the museum and noticed that their company had recently developed a new updated version of a piece of kit. Fortunately for us, they offered us a model for the Museum’s […]
Fancy watching Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton dressed up in sumo costumes to wrestle over who truly discovered gravity? Well that’s the kind of thing that happens in Science Museum Live – and the second season is starting in January 2012.
We have commissioned a series of photographic portraits of Professor Hawking to celebrate his 70th birthday at the end of this week. He is best known for his work on time, black holes and the Big Bang. But in a New Scientist interview to celebrate his birthday, he admits he spent most of the day thinking about women. “They are,” he says “a complete mystery.”
We have some amazing volunteers doing fantastic work helping us uncover more about our collections. Regina and Alix started volunteering with the Science Museum in October 2011, and are currently working on a project to catalogue the museum’s extensive microscope slide collections. Here’s the first in a series of blogs they’ve written to let you know more about what they’ve discovered in the basement of our store at Blythe House… Imagine a room full to the brim with curious wooden […]
Happy 2012 to everyone! The New Year Honours List has been announced and some will be starting off 2012 with new titles or new letters after their names. A number of scientists and medical researchers were honoured this year. Unsurprisingly the Science Museum’s medical collection has its fair share of sirs and dames as well as OBEs and Orders of Merit. Arthur Weston made a number of artificial prostheses while imprisoned in Stalag VIIIB/344 (Lamsdorf) during the Second World War. […]
We always knew our followers were a curious lot but now we have the stats to back it up! We started sharing Lunchtime Reading links on Twitter and Facebook back in June and here is a roundup of our the 10 most popular.
A pencil that does your homework for you, clouds that rain chocolate and a levitating chair – just a few of the ingenious inventions that have been dreamt up by visitors to our Launchpad gallery.
There’s a keyboard player and a drummer ready to play some uplifting tunes below a giant disco ball. No, I’m not talking about a 1970s inspired Glee episode. I am of course talking about our Garden interactive gallery!
Christmas is upon us and once again we will express our affection for friends and family through the giving and receiving of gifts. What could be more pleasurable? Unfortunately, for every perfect gift there will also be something boring or ill-fitting… or both. And for every sure-fire liquid gift for fun-loving Uncle Joseph, there’s the annual agony of finding something for your Gran. Really, what does she need at her age? But even the most desperately clichéd of standby Christmas gifts can […]
We love receiving letters from our visitors. In this letter, a girl called Molly asked us to track the adventures of ‘Flat Stanley’ for a school project.
Our Pattern Pod interactive gallery for kids aged 5 to 8 is all about patterns. Patterns that you can see, hear and touch.