Palais de la decouverte

Located at the West side of the Grand Palais (also known as Antin's Palace), that is, quite centrally situated in Paris, a little down from the Champs-Élysées, the Palais de la découverte (The Palace of Discovery) is a museum and scientific cultural center created in 1937 on the occasion of the 'Arts and Technique in the Modern Life' World Fair. As it was, in substance, remarked by its creator, the Nobel Prize in Physics Jean Perrin, it is about “realizing how important a part science has played in the creation and development of our civilization”. Nowadays, its purpose hasn't changed: it tries to take science out of the laboratory to show, to the big public, how is it made. Thus, the visitors are welcome to play and seek in the museum: observe, compare and wonder about the real live experiments who are explained by a commentator. The Palais de la découverte proposes a myriad of workshops where everyone can, according to each level and age, widen and sharpen as they wish their knowledge in physics, chemistry, life sciences, mathematics, geology, astronomy, astrophysics... As an example, we may take a look at experiments with liquid and electrostatic air, remain bedazzled with an inertial ride, watch the 'Franklin mansion' explode or amuse with a Faraday cage. Temporal exhibitions also allow to assist, live, to a volcano eruption or travel to the bottom of an ant-hole accompanied with 2 m. tall insects...