A few thoughts about modern #museum for #science, after I visited a few in the last months

(e.g. https://mastodon.social/@franco_vazza/114438970133673779

https://mastodon.social/@franco_vazza/114965935128090992

https://mastodon.social/@franco_vazza/114983548716611231
)

Curious to know what other people here think about this.

Modern #museums are really captivating, and children (at least in the 5-10 years of age I directly tested) generally love them, at least for the first hour or so.

They are dynamics, the spaces are inviting, all is elegant and "cool".

A definitely good result is that, after spending a few hours visiting a modern natural history or science museum, children (and adults) want to go to another one after a few weeks.
There's no sense of fatigue of repulsion, and so the cycle can continue and everybody is happy!

And having children liking the idea to go to a museum is a win by itself!

The other side of the coin, is that to be hones I do not know what they actually learn. But is *learning* a true goal of a museum?

I have seen now dozens of cool #physics experiments (fluids, forces, angular momentum, waves, energy etc) and I truly enjoyed them as a physicists. But without the actual explanation of what's behind, which sadly requires a minimum of math, no one could understand what is going one.

However, I understand that organising a museum with goal of teaching something, might make it boring and less profitable (no criticism here: museums to survive need to cash in)

So the final overall impression of most visitors of alla ages is that"science is cool" , and this appears to be the take home message.

Which would be by itself a good achievement. The downside would be, that the actual learning process of science is less flashy and more structured than this - which might scare someone.

However, we also have past decades of more structured and linear concepts of museums (of which I had memories with mixed feelings of when I was a child).

A poll here:

https://mastodon.social/@franco_vazza/114987373545270583

A somewhat evident divide is visible between #astronomy -oriented exhibition/museums and natural ones.
In the same days, we also did the public night visit to a local astronomical observatory, managed by an astro amateur society (almost overbooked, pricy, shiny).
In astronomy, it's hard to imagine an exhibition like in other sciences: all is pretty much images, or videos.
Hence the visit had to be structured, linear, with a guide telling "a story"

The need of showing movies and images with a given sequence introduces by design a structure and a story, and this makes the visit much more traditional.
There is actual transfer of information during the presentation...but no matter how spectacular the images are, at the end children are much more bored than during a modern museum visit instead. Although they might have learned actually more (under some metric).
So, what is best?