It started out as a Palace of Fine Arts, then became the Natural History Museum, and only settled on being a science museum in the Thirties. The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, located a couple of kilometres from central Chicago, is the southernmost of the city's long line of lake-fronting museums. It concentrates on the marvels of science and the machines of the industrial age – both of which the city has made its mark on.
Here you will find the shiny 1930s styling of the record-breaking train, Pioneer Zephyr the elegant aggression of a WWII British Spitfire fighter and the battered beauty of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, which flew around the moon. But this isn't a museum for just looking, with no touching.
The man who pushed for this fabulous Beaux Arts building to be turned into a temple to science – local millionaire Julius Rosenwald – wanted visitors to touch, play and learn from the exhibits. So you'll find plenty to engage with. There are live science events every day, letting you try out cryogenic freezing with liquid nitrogen, to experiment with vacuums, or to join an 'atom party', and do some 'bonding'.
One of the most astounding of the 70 halls in this palatial museum is the Science Storm hall. Here you can discover the science behind destructive events like storms, tsunamis and avalanches. There is a wind tunnel, a twelve-metre vortex machine to create a tornado, and a lightning generator – all of which let you take the driving seat and make your own weather. For a more down-to-earth experience, you can try out the Coal Mine exhibit. This takes you on a ride down a tunnel into the depths of a mine shaft, where you can see miners demonstrating how the technology for pulling coal from the ground has changed over the years.
The human body is exposed with a walk-through of a 4-metre high human heart, while you can step into the past at Yesterday's Mainstreet. This recreates a cobbled Chicago street from over 100 years ago, with several old-time Chicagoan businesses (many still actually in business). It includes a working ice-cream parlour, as well as a Nickelodeon cinema, where you can watch films – maybe with an ice-cream in hand, but sadly no sound. Science hadn't invented talkies yet.
