Museum of Science and Industry

With Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition here at MSI, things falling has been on my mind. You get to test the falling toast myth ("Butter Side Down") inside the exhibition, but what is the truth behind falling pennies and falling cats?

A cat recently fell from the 19th floor of a building, and survived with little damage. Not because it has nine...

In order to be a liquid on Earth—normally, it's a gas—nitrogen (N2) must reach temperatures below -321° Fahrenheit. Here at the Museum of Science and Industry, we do a program called “Happy Brr-thday!” that routinely involves pouring liquid nitrogen into glass containers that are at room temperature, or approximately 70° F.

That is almost like taking a glass container out of a 400° F...

This past summer saw the shutdown of the Tevatron, a particle accelerator located at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. Guests at MSI have expressed some confusion about what Fermilab’s mission will be post-Tevatron. According to Fermilab's wesbite, their focus going forward falls into three groups of research.

The first is analyzing data from the Tevatron, the most high-energy particle accelerator/collider until the Large...