"You went," you say to us, "to a science museum two weeks ago. You are," you continue, "in a city that is famous for art, and you have yet to write about the art museums that you've gone to." (There's a reason for that.) "You are telling us about some other science museum? Nobody goes to Paris to see science museums!"
To which I reply by pointing out that there were no art museums on the must see lists of any of my kids and that Paris has lots of cool science-type museums, and that, while we have seen most of the big art museums (we've been in Paris a lot), we haven't seen all of the science museums, and that exuberant children get far fewer dirty looks at science museums than they do at art museums, all of which is by way of explaining why it is that we ended up at the Palais de la Découverte, which is the second of the really big Paris science museums. And, better yet, we even managed to drag Blaise with us. On a Friday. I think that maybe he was feeling guilty about abandoning us to go to Pisa.
What was cool about the Palais:
1. It has a lot of demonstrations and classes taking place in all of the different sections of the museum: physics, biology, mathematics, etc. Alas, they were all in French, and so we didn't participate, but it was cool, nonetheless.
2. The mathematics section was very well done. We watched part of a video explaining homotopy classes using manipulatives (there were no coffee mugs or donuts involved) and discussed what the mathematicians listed around around the top of the atrium had accomplished. And we talked about the fact that Emmy Noether was not on the list (nor were any other female mathematicians).
3. There was an interesting temporary exhibition about animals and sex, which I walked through with a rather embarrassed almost 13 year old girl.
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