Take A Closer Look
Exhibit [Return to listing page]
Blue Wing, Lower Level
Some of history's great scientists did their best work when employing all of their senses to better observe their world. This renovated, updated exhibit (formerly The Observatory: Seeing the Unseen) is packed with interactive components that encourage you to exercise your powers of perception. See what you can discover when you pay attention to your senses, and learn about ways technology can extend our reach beyond what we can perceive on our own.
Visitors will explore the world around them using all of the senses: sight, hearing, touch, and smell. Test the sensitivity of your fingers, explore the limits of your hearing, find hidden shapes, or identify a familiar melody.
To supplement our own bodies' capabilities, we have developed technologies to help us extend our senses—to help us perceive things that are too fast, too small, too far away, or simply invisible to the naked eye.
Use a microscope to examine insects and pond life, or find the hidden crown in every splash of milk. See a sound wave, and identify images taken by our scanning electron microscope (SEM), capable of magnifying objects up to 200,000 times. The SEM is demonstrated periodically in Take a Closer Look.
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