Museum of Science & Industry   

5700 S Lake Shore Dr
Chicago, IL 60637
773-684-1414
www.msichicago.org

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Long before children's museums even existed, the Museum of Science and Industry offered exhibits that encouraged interaction which made it the favorite of generations of Chicago school kids. Open in 1933, the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere works hard to keep visitors' neurons firing by offering exceptional traveling and permanent exhibits in a spectacular building -- MSI is the only remaining building from the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Over the years, everyone from Queen Elizabeth of England and Walt Disney to David Letterman and Halle Berry have watched chicks emerge wet and scruffy from their shells, walked through a real German U-boat (whose capture helped the Allies win World War II) as well as through a 16-ft model of the human heart and taken a dark ride down a working coal-mine shaft elevator circa 1933. All the old favorites are there -- Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle, The Farm, The Great Train Story -- as well as cutting edge displays such as Genetics: Decoding Life, Toymaker 3000 and the OmniMax Theater featuring a wrap-around five-story domed screen, 20,000 watts of power you can certainly hear and occasionally feel and films of astonishing clarity. Don't miss it.