Mac Rating: 0.00 | Votes: | Date: 03/06/2026 15:19:00

On the Charles River Dam immediately north of the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Boston, the Museum of Science Boston is one of the largest and most heavily visited science museums in the United States and one of the most architecturally distinguished. The museum spans the Charles River Dam itself, with the main museum building straddling the river between the Cambridge and Boston shores on a unique cantilever foundation built atop the early-twentieth-century dam structure. The museum opened in February 1951 in its present Charles River location, succeeding the original 1830 Boston Society of Natural History (one of the oldest scientific institutions in the United States). The museum's collection includes more than 700 individual permanent exhibits and rotating temporary exhibitions arranged across three principal exhibition floors. The standout single permanent exhibit is the celebrated Theater of Electricity, the world's largest functioning Van de Graaff generator, originally built in 1933 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and donated to the museum in 1956. The 36-foot-tall electrostatic generator produces approximately 5 million volts of static electricity, with daily lightning shows in which visitors can safely observe enormous 15-foot artificial lightning bolts in a specially shielded auditorium. Other celebrated permanent exhibits include the Hall of Human Life (covering human biology, evolution and health), the Cosmic Light gallery (covering astronomy and astrophysics), the celebrated Triceratops Cliff (one of the most complete Triceratops fossil skeletons in the United States), the celebrated Mathematica exhibit (designed by the celebrated 1960s American industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames, one of the most influential mathematics exhibits in American museum history), the Discovery Center for younger children and the celebrated Engineering Design Workshop hands-on engineering lab. The museum also operates the Charles Hayden Planetarium (one of the most heavily renovated planetariums in the United States, with the 2011 renovation installing a state-of-the-art digital projection system) and the celebrated Mugar Omni Theater, a five-storey-tall domed IMAX theatre showing daily large-format science and nature documentaries. A separate Gordon Current Science & Technology Center on the third floor presents continuously updated exhibits covering the latest developments in science and technology. The museum is open daily with extended evening hours on Friday and Saturday.