A Grand History of the World at Work
Written: Dec 27 '00 (Updated Dec 27 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: large, all-encompassing, grand, interesting, ever-changing
Cons: lots of interactive tools were broken
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| joli's Full Review: Chicago Museum of Science and Industry |
I didn't know what to expect when we went to the Museum of Science and Industry for the first time ever in October. I grew up my whole life in Illinois, half of it less than two hours from Chicago, and I had never been to the museum before. As I think about it now, I wonder why I never went on a field trip or something. This museum is a perfect field trip destination; actually it's a perfect destination for inquisitive kids and adults traveling in any way.
The museum is a large white building with a grand entrance perfect for picture taking. If you park in the parking garage, be sure and take the time when you are through to go out to the entrance and look at it because the parking garage bypasses the entrance completely. The building is on a large field of glass, and it looks like one would imagine ancient Roman buildings looking – with stairs that go on forever and grand, white pillars bordering and hiding the modern doors.
We went in October of 2000 at about 11 in the morning. The weather was still great, and the parking lot was already full. We ended up having to circle down to the lowest level to park. When we got out of the car, the first thing we noticed was the full size locomotive engine behind a large glass pane on the museum side of the underground parking lot. We saw signs every three feet or so reminding us to remember where we parked, which aptly enough, was the "Trains Level". The locomotive, which was easily 30 feet high, was a very graphic reminder of the level we parked on.
We walked in the doors and went towards the right to the lines to pay. Our tickets were very reasonable I thought; they were $7 a piece. Directly behind the ticket lines was the museum store, and outside of the store was a man playing with a paper airplane. As we watched, he would throw the plane away from himself, and it would curve out from his hand and back again to him. He was very good with the plane; he made it curve around a woman and between her and her friend and then back to him. Of course we went to the store and bought six of the planes for our nieces and nephews and a few other items. It is a good store to buy presents for kids because they are all fun and educational.
With our bag of goodies in hand (you may want to save the store till you’re on your way out) we went up the escalators and entered the museum. It is huge! If I remember correctly there were three or four levels, and a one of the levels had a ceiling that had to be 70 feet high. Our first order of business was food, so after some confusion (the place is really big) we found a cafeteria-style restaurant that was one of four. The food was decent, and not too outrageously priced, but I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way to eat there.
After food, we started wandering. There was nothing we had to see, so we hit everything. We went to every level, and looked at everything, only briefly walking through stuff that didn’t interest us. The Titanic exhibit was only being built behind large, velvet, stage-coverings, so we didn’t get to see it.
My husband was really interested in The Farm exhibit. I, having been raised on a mini-farm and near a large dairy farm, was less interested, but it was neat to see him exclaim over stuff that I knew more about than him (very rare). There was a large green combine on some spongy corn-dirt simulated ground, which is neat-looking if you’ve never seen one. There was a simulated statue of a milking cow people could try out, and a video showing stages of corn growth.
Around the corner, practically hidden, was the baby chick exhibit. If you don’t readily see this – hunt for it, especially if you have young children. Baby chicks are unbearably cute and even I, the weathered farm girl who probably raised two hundred baby chicks from eggs, was taken with them. The chicks are in a large incubator covered with glass and at kid-level for easy viewing. One side of the incubator is fuzzy chicks that are obviously over a day old, and would easily fit in the palm of your hand. There were probably 60 or so of them, some sleeping, some blinking at you curiously, some eating, some scratching in the dust, and quite a few aggressive ones running to explore your hands at the glass, ruthlessly climbing over others in their way.
The other side of the incubator showed various stages of hatching eggs. There were maybe 30 eggs in all, some cracked apart at the beginning of a slimy trail which ended at an exhausted looking slimy chick sleeping or gingerly trying out its wings. My husband found an egg with a small hole in it and said “look, that ones about to come out”. I explained to him that the chick inside would probably rest for an hour after making that hole before it did any more strenuous hatching rituals. There was one egg that was cracked down the side and wobbled as the chick inside tried to push its way out; this clearly fascinated the children around it.
Besides the baby chick exhibit, the things that most interested us were the Prenatal Development slides, showing the fetus from peanut size to ready-to-burst-out size; the Ships Through the Ages exhibit, with various parts of the oldest to the newest ocean ships; the computer imaging and virtual reality exhibits, with the screen you could stand in front of showing an image of your body heat; the Walk Through Heart; and all the large planes, trains, and submarines on display.
One thing I was disappointed with was the disrepair of a lot of the smaller exhibits. Many learning tools were hands-on exhibits, like the computer games that test your knowledge and the stands that demonstrate inertia or other scientific principles. About every third one was broken. I know that thousands of people must touch that stuff every day, but I was still disappointed to find so much of it broken.
This museum is very large, and packed to the brim with secrets about our world. You could spend eight straight hours walking through and not scrape the bottom or get bored. Most of the exhibits are interactive, to fool kids into learning something when they think they are playing. The larger exhibits, like the Titanic, are changed every few months, so even if you went last year, there will be new and exciting things this year. The Museum of Science and Industry is a grand undertaking, worthy both of your time, and its world-wide fame.
Recommended:
Yes
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joli
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Location: Keaau, HI
Reviews written: 126
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That is my son Joseph in the picture.
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