Sites of a sciency sort

Museums, monuments and instruments

64 Places

Göttingen, Germany

Wiechert Earthquake Station

Home to the world’s oldest seismograph and a four-ton steel ball that makes its own earthquakes.

Tony Dunnell

Added by Tony Dunnell

Einstein Fountain

Albert Einstein's head sticks out of a snail shell stacked on a rocket in this truly bizarre monument to the scientist.

macsking11

Added by macsking11

Valdivia, Chile

Foucault Pendulum of Valdivia

A 63-foot-tall swinging ball hypnotizes passersby, and proves to any remaining doubters that the Earth is spinning.

Capemarsh

Added by Capemarsh

Grantham, England

Woolsthorpe Manor

Isaac Newton's former home, where the famous apple tree still stands.

Trevor

Added by Trevor

Boston, Massachusetts

World's Largest Air-Insulated Van de Graaff Generator

The massive machine creates cracking displays of indoor lightning.

Added by dsewers

Leiden, Netherlands

Leiden’s Wall Formulae

Science meets wall art to highlight the beauty of famous mathematical equations.

CoolCrab

Added by CoolCrab

Salzburg, Austria

Meteorological Pillar of the 19th Century

The beautiful, ornate weather station is the most popular geocache in Salzburg.

Added by gretchenmora

Bremen, Germany

Bremen Drop Tower

The only microgravity tower in Europe can produce nine seconds of weightlessness.

IvyMike

Added by IvyMike

Musée Curie

The history of radiation is on safe display at the foot of a radiation science laboratory.

Indygenous

Added by Indygenous

Esperance, Australia

Skylab’s Remains

A tiny museum in Esperance, Australia, displays a bunch of space debris from NASA’s Skylab.

Tony Dunnell

Added by Tony Dunnell

Wall Township, New Jersey

Project Diana Site

The first dish to bounce radio signals off the Moon, it was the forerunner to the U.S. Space Program.

mikelauber

Added by mikelauber

Pingtang County, China

The Eye of Heaven

The largest radio telescope in the world searches for extraterrestrial life from the remote limestone peaks of southern China.

Elliot Carter

Added by Elliot Carter

Magdalena, New Mexico

Bracewell Radio Sundial

A one-of-a-kind sundial at the Very Large Array honors a radio astronomy pioneer, incorporating the original piers from his breakthrough radio telescope.

Added by zackofalltrades

Washington, D.C.

NIST Newton Apple Tree

A clone of a cloned tree that was so important it allegedly had its own guards.

Elliot Carter

Added by Elliot Carter

Helston, England

Goonhilly Earth Station

Arthur, Merlin, and Guinevere are among the largest and oldest satellite dishes on the planet.

Added by DrMV and ProfPR

Los Angeles, California

Griffith Observatory’s Tesla Coil

High on a hill overlooking Los Angeles lives a world famous, high-power conical Tesla Coil.

Rachel

Added by Rachel

Santiago, Chile

National Astronomical Observatory of Chile

This observatory high on a hilltop in the center of Santiago got its start in 1852.

Dylan

Park Ridge, Illinois

American Science & Surplus

A science teacher's dream.

Rebekah Otto

Added by Rebekah Otto

Yonkers, New York

The Science Barge

Self-sufficient greenhouse floating on the Hudson River.

Leslie McIntyre

Added by Leslie McIntyre

Davis, California

Bohart Museum of Entomology

This museum boasts the ninth-largest collection of insects in North America.

Elise

Livermore, California

National Ignition Facility

Location of the most powerful laser in the world, and the potential birthplace of tiny stars.

Dylan

Flagstaff, Arizona

Lowell Observatory

This Arizona observatory is famous for investigations into Martian life, and as the place humans first spotted Pluto.

Trevor

Added by Trevor

Shchyolkovo, Russia

Star City

Secret Soviet city once home to Russian cosmonauts and space training facilities.

Trevor

Added by Trevor

Korolyov, Russia

RKK Energiya Museum

This iconic Russian space museum sits on a landmark space production facility and houses the Vostok 1, the first manned spacecraft, that was also built here.

Mark Casey

Added by Mark Casey

Alamogordo, New Mexico

New Mexico Museum of Space History

Home of the International Space Hall of Fame.

Leslie McIntyre

Added by Leslie McIntyre

Los Angeles, California

Space Shuttle Endeavour

The final resting place of a space program monolith, soon to be unveiled again to the public.

Rachel

Added by Rachel

Göttingen, Germany

The Göttingen Collection of Mathematical Models

These beautiful objects represent beautiful ideas.

Sarah Laskow

Added by Sarah Laskow

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Cyanometer

Martin Bricelj Baraga's monolithic sculpture measures the blueness of the sky, and changes color to match it.

AaronNetsky

Added by AaronNetsky

Stockholm, Sweden

Sweden Solar System

The world's largest model of our planetary system.

The Last Original Standard Metre

An overlooked marble is the only surviving in-place 18th century example of the measurement that changed how we define distance.

Allison

Added by Allison

Oxford, England

Oxford Museum of the History of Science

An extraordinary collection of scientific instruments - and Einstein's chalkboard - inside the world's oldest purpose built museum building.

Annetta Black

Added by Annetta Black

Kaukapakapa, New Zealand

Electrum

One of the world's largest Tesla coils.

Dylan

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia

Marconi National Historic Site

Site of the first official transatlantic wireless communications.

Trevor

Added by Trevor

Millers Point, Australia

Sydney Observatory

This historic observatory contains the world's oldest refracting lens telescope.

Maputo, Mozambique

Maputo Natural History Museum

From neon green watering holes to bleached elephant foetuses, this Mozambique museum makes natural history weird.

katieb82981

Added by katieb82981

Cape Town, South Africa

South African Astronomical Observatory

This historic observatory was established to keep shipwrecks from littering the Cape of Good Hope.

Dylan

Foucault’s Pendulum

Site of a classic 19th-century physics experiment to prove the earth is rotating.

Dampo

Mount Hamilton, California

Lick Observatory

The world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory continues to report on the stars.

Annetta Black

Added by Annetta Black

Umm Salal Muhammed, Qatar

Barzan Towers

These beautiful historic watchtowers were used for both scanning the desert for enemy invaders and observing the celestial world.

Max Cortesi

Added by Max Cortesi

Javier Puerta Museum of Anatomy

One of the world's oldest universities houses an incredible collection of anatomical models, mummified body parts, and human bones.

rachellyon

Added by rachellyon

Reverte Coma Forensic Museum

The morbid items in this small and hidden museum are not for the weak stomached.

Luis Morato

Added by Luis Morato

Museo Geominero

Earth's rocky history has rarely glittered so brightly as it does in this Spanish museum.

littlebrumble

Added by littlebrumble

Güejar Sierra, Spain

Mohon del Trigo Observatory

This abandoned, turn-of-the-century astronomy hub is now the subject of more photographs than it ever took.

EricGrundhauser

Added by EricGrundhauser

Elmhurst, Illinois

Barbara A. Kieft Accelerator ArtSpace

A former atom smasher turned into an art gallery.

OneEaredDemon

Added by OneEaredDemon

Berkeley, England

Temple of Vaccinia

The "father of immunology" used this humble hut to offer the local people some of the world's first free vaccinations.

Added by sputnikandstars

Heusweiler, Germany

The Heusweiler Motorway Faraday Cage

A Faraday Cage protects cars from a nearby high-power transmitter.

Überherrn, Germany

Europe 1 Transmitter

Most powerful transmitter in Germany only broadcasts in the French language.

Radkan Tower

A sophisticated astronomical tower built by one of the greatest Persian scholars of the Islamic Golden Age.

Added by ser42001

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