Nerdy Museum Day

Another day of culture in old London town.  :)  I spent most of my day at the Science Museum, which I had planned to visit a few weeks ago but rescheduled in favor of something else.  I'm really glad that I went today, though, because I had a great time.  The headlining exhibit right now is "Wallace and Gromit Present A World of Cracking Ideas," which is all about inventions.  It was an adorable layout, designed like Wallace's house, with a lot of kid-friendly, interactive areas.  It also contained some of the original set pieces from the claymation, which was pretty exciting for me.  My favorite section contained ideas that never really caught on, some of which made me laugh audibly (my favorite was the chocolate teapot, followed  by instant water...just add water!).  I also checked out an exhibit called "Who Am I?" which was a fascinating study of the human body and what makes it individual.  It contained information about blood types and DNA and the like, which was to be expected, but it also followed several volunteers who had all of this information recorded and presented.  After seeing their blood types and face casts, it was interesting to hear everyday information about them as well.  The exhibit also discussed some psychological elements, including phobias, and an introduction to evolutionary information as traced through DNA.  Another exhibit that I particularly enjoyed was a visual history of medicine, presented largely through models and recreations of rooms.  The displays ranged from a small model prehistoric surgical procedure (using a rock to puncture a hole in the skull in order to release demons) to a full-scale recreation of an operating room during open heart surgery in the 1980s.  I think that I enjoyed this exhibit so much because it was presenting information that I already knew in a different way...the models were so incredibly detailed, and they had such a broad range of time periods and procedures.

When I had seen the exhibits that particularly interested me, I went down to the cafe for afternoon tea, then walked next door to the Natural History Museum.  When I visited it a few weeks ago, I had not checked out the Evolution or Primate exhibits, and since closing time was looming, I opted to have a quick stroll through them.  Both exhibits were small, lining the upper balcony that overlooks the main atrium, but they were interesting nonetheless.  The primate exhibit did not contain as many specimens as some of the other specific exhibits, but it had quite a bit of video footage and sought mainly to compare various other species' social behavior with that of humans, so both exhibits really sought to put humans in their place in the grand scheme of evolution.

Although Sundays are great days for museum outings, everything tends to close fairly early, leaving me with an open evening and not much to do.  Ah well...it's time to prepare for the busy work week ahead and plan out my free time.  As of right now, I am seeing four shows between tomorrow and Saturday afternoon (not including whatever productions are in progress at BAC), so I should probably conserve my energy for now!