Museums have changed. They are no 1 places where one “should” go but now they are places 2 .
At a science museum in Canada, you can feel your hair stand on end as harmless electricity 3 through your body. At the Children's Museum in New York, you can play an African drum. There are no “Do Not Touch” signs in some 4museums in the USA.
More and more museum directors 5 that people learn best when they can become part of what they are 6 . In many science museums, the visitors are encouraged to touch, listen, operate and experiment so as to discover scientific rules for themselves.
The purpose is 7 to provide fun, but also to help people feel at home in the world of science. If people don't understand science, they 8 afraid of it, and if they are afraid of science, they will not make the best use of it.
One cause of all these changes is the increase in wealth and spare time. 9 cause is the growing number of young people in the population. Many of them are college students or college graduates. They see things in a new and different way. They want art that they can take part in. The same is true of science and history.
The old museums have been changing and the government is encouraging the building of new, modern museums. In the United States and Canada, there are more than 6, 000 museums, almost twice as 10 as there were 25 years ago.
The Natural History Museum is close to the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. It houses the largest natural history collection in the world. Over seventy million specimens (标本) are kept there, and many of them are displayed (显示) using the latest interactive technology. For example, you can experience an earthquake and meet a life size blue whale face to face. The collection started in 1753 and grew as more and more explorers and scientists gave their collections to the museum. In the mid 一 19th century, a new museum building was designed to house it. The building opened in 1881 is interesting itself, because all of the decorations are related to natural history topics.
As well as the curator and the workers who look after the museum, there are also 300 scientists working there on different aspects of the natural world, so it is a real, living museum.
Like all of London's main museums, the entrance there is free, except for special exhibits, and the opening hours are generous.
