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Spend a day exploring the UK’s biggest science attraction. Get up close and marvel at the
ingenious inventions that revolutionised our understanding of the universe. Learn about the
theories behind them in clear, jargon-free explanations from a qualified expert. Uncover the
human stories of the remarkable scientists and engineers who re-made the world and took
human beings into space.

From the exquisite intricacy of the first clockwork machines to the gargantuan steam engines
of the Industrial Revolution; from the valves and wires of the prototype computer to the
spacecraft which brought Tim Peake home. Come on a journey through time and space,
energy and information, to the frontiers of knowledge.

The Science Museum can pose a challenge. Often visitors aren’t sure what to make of the
bizarre and other-worldly bits of apparatus they are looking at. Or maybe the ideas which
underpin them always seemed too abstract and complicated to follow. And then there’s
putting each piece in its correct historical context.

Now you can walk around the museum in the company of a science expert with years of
teaching experience. Together you’ll see some of the world’s most important objects up
close as you listen to the story of not just how they came to but why and what makes them
so important.

Find out what connects a 16th century pocket-watch to the world’s biggest computer and why
Galileo is the father of artificial intelligence. Learn what dastardly deed Isaac Newton did to
his worst enemy – and why. Discover who tried to lock himself in his own vacuum pump, and
what he was trying to prove. And find out why the secret of the age of steam lies inside a
squashed plastic bottle.

Gaze in wonder at the vehicles that took astronauts far from Earth, study in awe the actual
equipment which Watt, Joule and Turing handled in their work and peer inches away from a
piece of the Moon.

Learn the history of science like you’ve never encountered it before, through the objects and
people which made it happen.

 

The day is broken into four sections

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Part 1. TIME AND MOTION: looks at the scientific revolution, how the accurate measurement of time was the key to this new Age of Enlightenment and why London was at the heart of its development.

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Part 2. ENERGY:  gets up close with the dirt and grime of the industrial revolution and shows how extraordinary human ingenuity was able to capitalise on simple scientific concepts to create the wonderful but fearsome machines of the Age of Steam.

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Part 3. SPACE:  is literally rocket science – the easy version. It tells the story of humanity’s quest to slip the bonds of earth and journey among the stars to other worlds.

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Part 4. INFORMATION:  explains the path from a chain of Edwardian teashops to the final frontier: machines which can think like humans. This is the story of computing from the difference engine to the mobile phone and AI.