This Museum is one place Rick Steves steered me wrong. His description made it sound like it was mostly for kids with interactive exhibits and not a lot of substance. But that is far from the truth! It is up-to-date and snazzy in its use of exhibit space, for the most part, and there are some interactive areas. But, believe me, there is substance galore! I set aside a couple of hours for it and ended up doubling that—and still felt that I'd missed a lot! (Here is my blog post describing the visit.)

What's deceptive about the Museum is that the big open space in the middle, that you can see on the left below, here, with its big "Reinventing the Home" exhibit, is really only the tip of the Science Museum iceberg. There are miles of other galleries that lead off the main floor and criss-cross the basement, and they're all chock full of wonderful stuff. You can see some more of my pictures from the Museum in this Flickr set, and their website has a lot of online material as well. Click on "Objects and Stories" to explore it yourself, or follow the links I've provided below, when I found pages that related to my photos.

One of my favorite galleries was devoted to Mathematics along one side of the wide room, and Computing down the other. Completely apart from their functional uses, I just loved these models as works of art, and the "Difference Engine" you see below was photogenic as well:

Many of the most fun displays involved everyday objects. There was a special plastics exhibit that featured a tupperware mold and some funky bakelite radios, and the super-modern-looking coffee pots below were in "Reinventing the home." The "geysers," or water heaters were in the basement galleries that have the umbrella title "The Secret Life of the Home."

I really wish I hadn't saved the basement for the last part of my visit, as its collections of everyday objects from every decade were the some of the most delightful sights in the Museum. I probably didn't adequately appreciate them, being worn out from trying to see everything upstairs, but aren't these sewing machines and toasters cool!

More traditional industrial exhibits, like vehicles, and historical scientific instruments, are also in abundance in the Museum. The amusing display of VWs is a great example of how creative their exhibits are.

Shipping, flight, and railways take up more huge galleries. Here is an aircraft engine, one of a whole roomfull. And of course the explanatory material with each artifact is fascinating and hugely educational—worthy of many visits, that I wish I'd had time to make.

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