What are great places in US or UK for a physicist to visit?

[ZapperZ]

I like the Chicago Science museum. They have the first cyclotron, plus related items...

“Chicago Science Museum”?

If you mean the Museum of Science and Industry, I’d like to know where this “first cyclotron” exhibit is located. Didn’t know Berkeley would let something like this be transported to Chicago and be displayed here instead.

Zz.

 

[NTL2009]

Smithsonian Air and Space Museums ...

If you like Air Museums...

 

[EnglandSP]

As the title says, any ideas of great places that a physicist tourist could visit in US or UK?

I have been thinking about the Cavendish laboratory, Cambridge University, but I don't know whether it's open for visitors.

The best places are those where no one understands physics, as you may get the answer to something that has been puzzling you from a totally unexpected place. Like inventions - Most inventions are not the work of scholars or scientists, there usually discovered by accident in a garden shed.

 

[NTL2009]

The best places are those where no one understands physics, as you may get the answer to something that has been puzzling you from a totally unexpected place. Like inventions - Most inventions are not the work of scholars or scientists, there usually discovered by accident in a garden shed.

Good point. Along those lines, I would recommend (in Dearborn, Michigan, near Detroit):

https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/henry-ford-museum/

 

[Vanadium 50]

I’d like to know where this “first cyclotron” exhibit is located.

The real one is in the Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA. The first research cyclotron (the first one was proof-of-cocept) is also at Berkeley, having been returned from London.

 

[ZapperZ]

The real one is in the Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA. The first research cyclotron (the first one was proof-of-cocept) is also at Berkeley, having been returned from London.

That's what I thought as well, which was why I asked this member where exactly at MSI this "first cyclotron" exhibit is. I know MSI quite a bit, although, not as well as I know the 3 museums in the Chicago Museum campus downtown.

Zz.

 

[jtbell]

If you like Air Museums...

View attachment 215243

I wonder if they have any vintage smog from Donora, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh), 1948:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion...ory-forgets/DPRGTWSabpND68fOVyXNsJ/story.html

 

[Wilson Donald Rohan]

Back during the mid 1960's I used to love visiting the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry in Exposition Park, in particular, the Mathematica display. This was a colaborative effort between IBM and the Eames design team. The display is long gone (the museum has been completely rebuilt to meet seismic code and renamed the California Science Center), but the display is intact at the Museum of Science in Boston. They spent a year refurbishing it and I think they are finished now. I don't know if it would interest a physicist, but as a child, I found it inspiring.

 

[Wilson Donald Rohan]

That's what I thought as well, which was why I asked this member where exactly at MSI this "first cyclotron" exhibit is. I know MSI quite a bit, although, not as well as I know the 3 museums in the Chicago Museum campus downtown.

Zz.

This is interesting. I guess the cyclotron that I saw at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (that I visited in 2005) was not the first. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...135.1073741968.100000087721041&type=3&theater

 

[Cathal]

It would be cool to visit the LIGO interferometer considering it’s founders received the Nobel prize in physics this year.

 

[Wilson Donald Rohan]

This may sound silly, but one of my favorite museums is in Roswell, NM. It is the Roswell Museum & Art Center (and planetarium). It features a permanent display of Robert Goddard's workshop, and some of his liquid-fueled rockets. It's free to the public. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...352.1073741920.100000087721041&type=3&theater

 

[Wilson Donald Rohan]

If you are in Idaho, and you want to see something really unusual, I suggest the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 exhibit and the two atomic aircraft engines: HTRE1 and HTRE3 on display outside. They are part of the Idaho National Laboratory. To get there, take I-26 southeast from Arco, Idaho. Turn left at Van Buren Blvd. and left again toward the display. It is open from Memorial Day to Labor day, Monday through Sunday, 9 am to 5 pm.