A couple of weeks ago, we went back to the Science & Industry Museum in Manchester, to see the newly re-opened Power Hall, and their latest exhibition, Horrible Science: Cosmic Chaos. I’ve written about their previous exhibitions here and here.
The Power Hall
The Power Hall has been closed for six of years for a refurbishment. This has included replacing the roof, and installing a more efficient heating system. Indeed, the new heating system is now an exhibit in itself – it’s based around water-source heat pumps which pump water from an aquifer 90 metres below the museum. The heating system also incorporates a recovery system for the steam generated by the various machines on display in the Power Hall. Overall, the new system should be cheaper to run and better for the environment, and explaining how it works is just what the museum should be doing. It’s quite the comparison to see this fancy new system alongside machinery that’s over a hundred years old.
Speaking of the other machines, these are not all on at the same time, but there is a schedule for when they are powered up. These include a talk by one of the museum’s explainer staff, about where the machine came from and what it was used for. We got to see the Buxton diesel generator in action, which used to work in mine research site in Buxton at a time when the site wasn’t connected to the Nation Grid.
As well as static machines, the Power Hall is also home to some locomotives. There’s an enormous steam locomotive with two tenders, that was built in Manchester almost 100 years ago but worked in South Africa. A smaller locomotive, which was built for the Isle of Man, has been sectioned so that you can see inside it. There’s also Ariadne, a Class 77 electric locomotive that was built for services on the now-closed Woodhead Line between Sheffield and Manchester, and was later exported to the Netherlands. The Woodhead Line used a 1500 KV DC electrification system which isn’t used elsewhere in the UK (apart from on the Tyne & Wear Metro) but is common in the Netherlands.
The refurbishment of the Power Hall is good, and it’s nice to see some of the old exhibits again. It’s also nice for the museum to have more than one building open again; hopefully the rest of the site will be ready by 2030 for the 200th anniversary of the Manchester Liverpool Road station.
Entry to the Power Hall is free.
Horrible Science: Cosmic Chaos
The BBC is following up its hit Horrible Histories series with Horrible Science, and this exhibition is themed around its central character, Dr Big Brain. At the start of the exhibition is a short video where you are recruited as one of his henchpeople, and you are tasked with helping him conquer the solar system. On the way, you get to see what passes for a toilet on a Soyuz-Mir spacecraft, how astronauts live in space, and what each planet in our solar system is like. There’s a good balance of objects from the museum’s collection, with videos and interactive activities for kids.
The exhibition is primarily aimed at 8-14 year olds, as you would expect for a CBBC TV series, but I learned a few things whilst there. As with other special exhibitions, you need to pay extra for entry. Advance booking is recommended for busier times, like school holidays, but when we went on a Sunday it wasn’t too busy.
Accessibility
I’m going to skip over the accessibility section for this one as it’s basically the same as last time we visited.
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