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| - This is a fun museum, but for a "science" museum it's a little light on the science. This is true in permanent installations and special exhibitions alike.
Even my favorite part on the museum, the robot floor, is really more a display of curiosities than a science exhibit. There's extremely little information on robotics or the science behind it, and while it makes me think robots are cool, it still has a ways to go before being truly inspirational and informative. It covers the "what" fairly well (demonstrations of current robotics technology as well as the imagination of robotic potential throughout the last few decades in the form of science fiction), but it misses the "why" and the "how"--the key questions behind actual science. How did we learn how to make robots? What did we borrow from nature? What were the failures like that taught us the lessons we needed for success? There are dozens of obvious questions that could really add a lot that no one even tries to address.
Likewise, with the special exhibits, the focus seems more about showing visitors something neat than actually focusing on the science. The last special exhibition I saw was on bicycles, and it was basically an exhibit out of a history museum. There were a few small sciencey things in the corners, but the focus was on the history of the bicycle. Showing everything from an early velocipede to a bike ridden by Pee Wee Herman was fun enough, I suppose, but well under 20% of the space in this science museum's main attraction had anything to do even remotely with science.
On my last visit, it seemed like the museum wanted to be half-science and half-history (or maybe history of technology)--and maybe that's OK, because they do it well, but there's just a lot of missed opportunities to make it a really great place for kids and adults alike to get excited about actual science.
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