National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Sweden

The National Museum of Natural History is a large and impressive museum in Stockholm, with some 10,000 m2 of exhibitions and 200 curators, researchers, and museum staff.


The entrance to the museum from the street is through a colorful and playful garden in the shape of a butterfly.

The museum mounted a major permanent exhibition on global warming in 2004 called “Mission: Climate Earth.” This exhibition, developed at a cost of about US $ 1 million, was inspired by a museum board member who is also a climate researcher and believed that the museum should stay ahead of the curve by bringing this topic to the public through a comprehensive exhibition, professionally designed and scientifically accurate.

The exhibition covers a number of aspects of global warming, including the difference between weather and climate, the geologic perspective on climate change, what individuals can do, and a sociological perspective on global warming.

The exhibition covers roughly 600 m2 and is primarily non-interactive, although a number of interactive exhibits have been added to highlight climate phenomena. Examples of interactive exhibits include several Exploratorium favoritos such as the tornado, turbulent orb, and water vapor ring. Several computer workstations cover topics such as El Nino, global temperature modeling, and calculating your carbon footprint.

A short but impressive multimedia presentation called “Eye of the Storm” plays in a well-designed theater located in the center of the exhibition. It impresses on visitors that major changes are coming and concludes with the question “Which path will you take?”

The exhibition is widely used by school groups, who can download the entire exhibition text and class worksheets from the museum’s website.

The museum has many other permanent natural history exhibitions. Two popular exhibitions involve dinosaurs and the 4.5-billion-year history of the Earth. A human body exhibition is perhaps the most widely used of all and is also the most interactive.

A particularly interesting temporary exhibition features the life and works of Carl Linnaeus, a Swede who developed the system of biological taxonomy still widely used today and whose 300th birthday is being celebrated this year.

One tidbit of administrative trivia for those who follow visitor data in museums: In 2004-5, the museum charged the equivalent of about $10 for an adult (18 years and up) ticket and hosted about 350,000 visitors. In 2006, the Swedish government decided that everyone should be able to visit the museum free, so admission fees were eliminated, and attendance jumped to 700,000. This year (2007), the government dropped the free admission program, and the museum went back to an adult charge of about $7. In response, attendance has dropped, despite the poor weather that has had many museums in Europe seeing record attendance. The museum is now hoping for about 400,000 visitors this year. This unplanned experiment might be of interest to museums that are experimenting with admission fees.

Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm sports over 70 museums, a number of whick involve science in some way. The Museum of Science and Technology is one of these major science-related museums and was inspired (as was the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in the U.S.) by the Deutsches Museum (the directors having been colleagues).













Founded in 1924 and moved to its current location in the 1930s, the entry gallery to the museum has collections on power and transportation, anchored by a huge steam engine that staff members can operate (though not with steam). Included in this gallery are cars, planes, bicycles, motorcycles and some Swedish engines, hydropower turbines, and related hardware.

One corner of the main entry gallery leads down to a mine exhibition, which takes visitors through the history of mining in Sweden, some of the major mining products, the smelting process, and products made from Swedish ores.

Other older galleries include a machine shop with overhead leather belt-driven equipment.












Nearby is a room devoted to Swedish inventions, including the Crescent-type adjustable wrench, the centrifugal cream separator used on farms, and the first taxi-fare meter.










One room highlights the work of Christopher Polhem, an early industrialist and engineer who developed a factory using mass production in the late 17th century and then, as a teacher of technology, created an “alphabet” of 80 mechanisms. He believed that a person could invent any conceivable machine using these mechanisms, and the museum has four cases of them, dating back 300 years (these are believed to be all that survive).

One gallery is devoted to Swedish women inventors and highlights a number of their devices, ranging from automobile seats that are more comfortable to a pocket defibrillator to an anti-rape belt that requires two hands to undo (presumably allowing the victim time to get away or strike the attacker).

A very popular area of interactive exhibits called “Teknorama” includes a number of hands-on favorites ranging from pulleys, levers, and gears, to the ubiquitous “Mind Ball.”

Although the museum does not have any current exhibits related to climate change, it hosted an interactive exhibit on alternative energy in the recent past called “Grasping Climate.” The exhibition was developed by Teknikens Hus in Lulea, Sweden and will be reviewed in a subsequent posting.

Nobel Museum in Stockholm, Sweden

The Swedish Academy in the Old Town of Stockholm is home to the Nobel Museum, which celebrates the distinguished scientists and peacemakers who have won prizes in the five areas of Physics, Chemistry, Biology/Medicine, Literature, and Peace.

The museum is relatively small and quite doable. An entry exhibition area displays the history of the prize, while two amphitheaters show looping 3-4 minute videos of the lives of various prize winners and how they came to their creative ideas that led to their prize.

Overhead is a constantly moving display of all the Nobel Prize winners over the years.

A changing exhibit area had an exhibition of black and white photos called “Images of War and Peace,” with a number of poignant scenes from the two world wars.

An adjacent room had players and headphones for listening to audio clips of selected acceptance speeches and toasts made at award dinners.

Another room was devoted to the life and “The Famous Will” of Alfred Nobel, and a “cabinet of creativity” displayed a set of objects that inspired various creative ideas leading to prizes.

Being a Cornellian, I was excited to see two familiar objects in this cabinet: first, a Cornell dining plate, representing Richard Feynman’s early experience at the university during which he watched a student spinning a plate on his finger at one of the dining halls and observed a relationship between the wobble-frequency and the angular velocity that eventually led to his electron-spin theory and the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Also in this curio cabinet was a ear of corn, which formed the subject of Barbara McClintock’s research at Cornell that led to her Nobel prize in genetics. Both were among the dozen or so prize winners featured for their creativity in the dozen or so short videos that cycle in the amphitheaters.

The video clips were interesting in that they gave unusually candid insights into the lives and minds of several prize winners. However, in most cases these films would probably not inspire someone sitting on the career fence trying to decide whether to make a career in science. For example, an interview with Schroedinger revealed that the inspiration and equations that led to his famous wave equation were developed during a family vacation in Europe. When asked about this period of intense creativity, he indicated that he had to wear ear plugs because the talking and carrying on of his family had made it too difficult for him to concentrate on his work.

Nobel Peace Museum in Oslo, Norway

While most people probably think of the Nobel Museum as being at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, there is another Nobel Museum in Oslo devoted to the 5th prize – the Nobel Peace Prize – for which winners are selected in Norway.

The museum uses a high-tech (and in some cases a normal-tech) combination of art, science, and technology to provide an inspired overview of the prize, its goals, some of the impacts that its winners have made, and a biography of the man who made it all possible with “The Famous Will.” Many of the stories are interesting, such as this sad vignette about Charlie Chaplin.

A temporary exhibit area near the entrance currently has a series of large screens with constantly changing vignettes that set a tone for the rest of the museum.

Upstairs, one room has an eerie exhibit consisting of a series of waist-high Plexiglas rods that glow bluish at their tips and display among them several dozen small screens with pictures of Nobel Peace Prize winners. When you approach a screen, it automatically brings up a short description of that person’s contribution to world peace.

A small, quiet room in one corner contains a large red (but otherwise blank) book on a stand. A sensor detects pages being turned, and a projector then projects on the blank pages the story of Alfred Nobel’s life. Like a touch screen, a circular cursor can be dragged to various items on each page, which then brings up additional details. It’s slick and works reasonably well. It’s a good example of an exhibit where technology can provide an additional level of interactivity, interest, and layered information; but if more than one person wants to use the exhibit at a time, it can be a frustrating experience for everyone.

Everything about this museum was focused on the mission, including the staff t-shirts, which say "Peace at Work" on the backs.

Another popular interactive exhibit consists of a wall with many screens and sliders that select vignettes and other information on Nobel Peace Prize winners. The screens overlap at times, and slowly cascading letters that form words sometimes seem more like gimmickry. But it’s hard not to be inspired by the stories of what prize winners have accomplished in their quest for making a difference in the world.

A Fred (Norwegian for "peace") Quilt created by hundreds of school children made a fitting end to the visit.

Universeum in Gothenburg, Sweden

Universeum, which opened in 2001, is located in a dramatic structure that received an architectural award for the best building design in Sweden since 1950. Conveniently located near a major public transit station, it is next door to a large amusement park and expects to host 500,000 visitors this year. This photo shows the watercourse along a sidewalk leading to the building in the background.










Universeum, like many European museums, is seeing record attendance in 2007, which it attributes in large part to the prolonged rainy weather.

Inside, the center has two major and very different parts. One part is devoted to biology and includes a stream-to-ocean environment and a large rain forest environment. On the other side of a huge glass wall are several floors of physical science exhibits.

To begin their journey through the biology section, visitors first take an inclined lift up 30 vertical meters to the top of a winding path that starts with the plants and aquatic fauna associated with a mountain stream environment in Sweden.

Long, waist-height, open-topped aquaria extend along the winding path and gradually transition to lower-elevations and a marine environment that transitions to a below-the-surface setting that includes a circular tunnel with sharks and other large fish. There is also a touch tank, shown here, where visitors can hold marine invertebrates when staff are present.

Galleries in this part of the building include terrestrial animals such as a popular exhibit called “Deadly Beauties,” with displays of colorful, but poisonous, snakes and other animals. These displays are beautifully designed and well maintained.

Visitors can then go through a large, multi-level rain forest environment that includes extensive displays of plants plus a few animals. Warm rain drips continuously in air with 100% relative humidity, and the effect is dramatic. These two areas are used extensively for school group visits, with generally involve a guided tour with extensive questions and answers between the staff and visiting students.

The transition to the physical sciences on the other side of the building is abrupt. Exhibits here are grouped in various thematic areas and include “Dig It!” (making music with computers in a series of stations in glass rooms, as shown in the photo).

“Brash, Bang, Boom” is an exhibition on automotive safety (sponsored by Volvo, of course, which is based in Gothenburg). In this exhibit, visitors learn that their speed in a 30 km/hr crash is equivalent to jumping from a height of 3.5 meters. They can experience this by climbing the stairs and jumping to the mat below. At 70 km/hr, it's like jumping from an 8-story building. A scale nearby weighs visitors in Kg and also shows the equivalent "mass" at 30, 50, and 70 km. This exhibition extends the mission of the science center in an interecting direction by combining the science with a public service. Every Thursday, police spend 2 hours at the exhibition talking with visitors about safety, and a workshop for teens uses an alcohol-related scenario to encourage critical thinking about the consequences of drinking and driving.

“Puls” is a popular series of physical challenges related to healthy hearts, although most visitors seem simply to enjoy the physical challenges more than the science. A weather center (under construction), a space flight and astronomy area, and several other single exhibits (included whisper dishes that reflect off a wall-mounted disk because there is no path within the exhibit area that is long enough align the two dishes axially.)

The building, as part of its design, incorporates a number of interesting sustainability-related features. One of them is a dual drainage system that separates toilet wastes into two streams and treats the liquid portion inside the building.

The center has recently received major funding to develop an exhibition on climate change. It is still early in the process, and the major thematic areas and individual exhibits are in the concept development stage. However, the core message will likely revolve around helping visitors to think critically about their personal actions and to make more-informed decisions about their individual and collective impacts on the global environment.

Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway

The Natural History Museum is actually a collection of three museums in a beautiful park setting in the City of Oslo. The main museum buildings house traditional collections in botany, geology, and zoology.

The museums are non-interactive and are organized along traditional lines of classification. In the Geology museum, for example, the lower floor provides a large number of rock specimens in the areas of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary geology.

The upstairs floor is devoted to physical and chemical processes in geology, mineralogy, and paleontology, including a full-sized cast of the T-rex Stan (who is now believed to have been a female).

The zoology museum is a series of dioramas and specimens in cases, with a small area for changing exhibitions. The museum had just closed an exhibition they had developed on homosexuality in animals. This exhibition brought in a large number of visitors and will soon be going on tour internationally. Many of the diaramas, including this heron, are beautifully done.

A large part of the park-like campus is devoted to several botanical gardens, which have been well-designed, well-maintained, and are a joy to spend time in.

Collections ranged from a nicely laid out rose garden to an aromatic smell garden to a rock garden that was created from the bequest of a man who had lived near the park and had grown up walking through it as a child.

Of particular interest was the signage, which was relatively sparse but full of interesting stories and tidbits. At the ginkgo tree grove, for example, in addition to the usual information about being one of the oldest types of trees still in existence, visitors can learn that ginkgo leaves were chewed by monks because the leaves contain a substance that reduced their need to urinate during long religious ceremonies.

While the museum has recently organized several public forums on global warming, it has not considered developing any exhibitions on climate change, in large part because the geologists associated with the museum think in geologic time scales, have studied the variability of the global climate throughout geologic time, and are unconvinced that the current global warming has an anthropogenic origin.

National Museum of Science & Technology in Oslo, Norway

Founded in 1914 and designated as the National Museum of Science and Technology in 1995, this museum, is dedicated primarily to the history of technology. It recently absorbed a small, independent, (and failing) science center in 2002, which it now operates it as a department. Another unit is a medical museum with permanent two exhibitions: one on the history of diseases from 1850 on and another on what it is like to be in a hospital, including a section for children and for the end of life.



The building is new. It also rents space to the Telecom Museum (which currently has a popular exhibition on the history and culture of ring tones.)

The exhibits in the science center area are robust. They are primarily Exploratorium favorites, sturdily built and all working, such as a Bernoulli Blower with target hoops.

Another major theme, of course, is oil. Exhibits in this area address the geology of oil and the technology of platforms, including what it’s like to work and live on a large deep-sea oil platform.

The main exhibit galleries are devoted primarily to energy and transportation. In the energy area, the museum has worked hard to bridge the two worlds of the science museum and the science center by showing some impressive and important examples of hardware from the Norwegian hydropower industry. Among these historical objects are interactive exhibits that demonstrate principles of electromagnetism and the generation of electricity. While most of these exhibits are close-ended, the museum is planning a major renovation that will change many of these.

The largest area of the museum is devoted to transportation. This section has traditional displays of cars, planes, motorcycles, bikes, etc.

A new and interesting program presents mini-exhibitions on current hot topics in science. These exhibitions may be on the order of 30 m2 (300 SF) and are designed for quick use in the lobby.

The current exhibit was called “Cyberstork” and raises questions about the ethics and technology associated with choosing a baby via the Internet.

The museum is currently developing a new exhibition on global warming that will open in early 2008, along with extensive programming for schools. This exhibition will include sections on the science of climate change as well as its impact on people throughout the world.