098 MIT Museum, Cambridge, MA 42° 21 42.50 N, 71° 5 51.64 W Ideas in the Making It will come as no surprise that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a museum, a good one at that. Instead of being filled with ancient scientific instruments (there are plenty of those to be found elsewhere--see Chapters 17, 19, and 77) the MIT Museum deals with recent scientific activity associated with the institute. The major exhibitions at the MIT Museum cover robotics and artificial intelli- gence, holography, the work of Harold Edgerton, and the education students receive at MIT. The museum also contains an exhibition of kinetic sculptures, a hands-on lab centered on DNA, and a collection of model ships. MIT is well known as a center for robotics and artificial intelligence, and the mu- seum doesn't disappoint. Many robots are on display, including Kismet (a robot with realistic facial expressions) and Cog (a humanoid robot). The entire robot- ics collection and exhibition is cutting edge, and well worth lingering over. The holography collection is simply the best in the world. There's an entire gallery of holograms to look at, including some (such as a woman blowing a kiss) that change as you move around them, and one featuring the artist Keith Haring. The complete hologram exhibit is also available online at the museum's website, but to see them properly you have to be there. The intersection of art and science is represented by the fantastic moving sculptures of Arthur Ganson. These include a machine that oils itself, flapping bird-like bits of paper, and a violin that plays itself using a feather. Harold Edgerton's photographs and films, made using a stroboscope for very high-speed photography, are the most important part of the MIT Museum col- lection. The strobe lights were able to stop the wings of a hummingbird in flight, study the motion of a golfer's swing, and capture a single drop of milk creating a splash. Even the pattern of smoke around a turbine blade is revealed. 383