Chicago Museum Of Science and Industry

Science fans will love this museum! Spending a day here isn't enough because there's so much to see.

The museum is separated into all different exhibits. Weather, Transportation, Genetics, Special Exhibits, Coal Mine, Circus World, Agriculture, Space Exploration, and many many more!!

My family stayed in this exhibit the longest. There's so much to do here that you can easily spend over an hour in this 2 story room. The one thing that catches your eye the minute you get close is the tornado whirling through the air. It has a beautiful light display that is fascinating to watch. As you walk in further, there's many hands on exhibits. You can race magnetic cars against each other and create tidal waves.

Upstairs, you will find a large scale Newman's Cradle that you can control changing the number distribution of the metal balls. As you walk in a little further, you will be awestruck by the lightening machine. Every few minutes, they blast it. It's incredibly loud but fascinating.

This huge room is packed with real transportation vehicles. Trains, planes, and automobiles to start. There's also trolley cars, air gliders, and yes, a real jet. You can go inside the jet and have a seat. You can check out the cockpit and look out the windows at the train display below.

The train display is of Chicago and it's so huge that the best place to see it is from the jet plane. You can easily spend an hour looking at all the details inside this display.

All of the vehicles in the transportation room were in use at some point in history. It was really interesting reading about when and where each one came from and what it was used for.

Special Exhibit

The special exhibit that was there when we went was Mythbusters. You have to buy special tickets when you get there and then they give you a time slot when you can go. They let people in every hour. They don't make you leave after an hour but that's the average amount of time it takes to get through it.

In the Mythbusters exhibit, there were many of the original props that were used in the TV show on display. A lot of the hands on displays were more for the younger kids but we still enjoyed most of it.

After you've gone through everything in the display, there's a live demonstration.

If you're interested in space travel, you'll love the space exhibit at this museum! There's 2 space shuttles on display. The other thing that we found really cool was the inside of a space shuttle that you could walk into.

The inside part that you could check out was only the basic living quarters. There were displays of the different kinds of food they ate, how they slept and what the bathroom looked like. It was full of all the little things that we normally take for granted during the day.

This room is full of farming equipment and agricultural exhibits. You can learn all about soybeans and their many uses in your home along with other things like how piglets are raised.

The big tractor was a hit too! Climbing up all the steps to get inside made it a fun exhibit for the kids.

We were getting ready to leave the museum but had to walk past the Burlington Zephyr to get to the parking lot. As we were looking at the outside of it, a tour guide came by and said they would be doing a tour shortly. I was so glad we were there when we were! They can only fit about 10 people in it at a time and it was great getting to see the inside. There's a few surprises inside the train and the whole time you're in there, the train actually rickets as if it's going along the tracks. What a neat feeling!

This room features a beautiful display of Earth. It's a dark room that plays a movie every so often about earth and global warming. It's was very interesting and longer than I expected. It's easy to walk through it without realizing that a movie will be playing so be sure to stop and wait for it.

I found this room to be nostalgic. I really enjoyed it. There were a few life size statues of the circus animals like the elephant, lions, and tigers. There were also multiple displays of circus tents that were complete with an audience, a ringmaster, all the animals and performers.

If you're not real fond of Chicago traffic, you might want to think about taking the train. At one point, the traffic was so bad that it filled 7 lanes across. It was a lot of traffic for someone who comes from a place where the most we have is 4 lanes across. A lot of people said to take the train in and out of Chicago but it really wasn't too bad until we tried leave around 4:00. That's when we hit all that traffic.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of the museum. It's a fun place to visit. Have you ever been there? What was your favorite part?