What is a good maths exhibit for a museum?

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - 23:44

Many of you might have visited maths museums (or even made maths museums or exhibits for them). What makes a good maths exhibit? I was recently thinking a lot about this question. And I did quite some “observation” of visitors in museums. Here some motivational questions, I hope to start some discussion on this topic.

1) How important is “entertainment”? Do visitors have to have fun while interacting with an exhibit. (I guess interaction is kind of standard for most exhibits nowadays, but we could question this too).

2) How important is physical interaction (“full body maths interaction”) compared to mouse or finger/touch screen interaction?

3) How important is the technical and design aspect? Does the exhibit have to feature some new technology and a great design?

4) How much do the visitors have to learn (take home) from the exhibit? How much do visitors read at exhibits (or how much patience and time should they “waste” at the exhibit)?

5) Should they learn some new maths? Should they take home motivation and curiosity only (can more be expected at a museum visit)?

Please add some more questions. I have one observation: The question “what is this good for” (at some more abstract or pure maths exhibits) was only asked by journalists and politicians, so this does not seem to be important at maths exhibits. And: visitors love complex stuff (I have the feeling that often they are not challenged enough) and they love open maths questions (closer to actual research). And: they should be able to CREATE at the exhibit, not only press a series of buttons and observe a series of resulting consequences, which are pre-programmed…

 

 

I think, regarding question 1) that having fun during the interaction is very important. Especially when one wants to address children or school students: they do not want to read a lot of "boring" texts but prefer to play around with an exhibit, maybe create something themselves and have fun while doing this. It is my experience with guided school tours, for example, that students really pay attention once you stop talking and start doing stuff with an exhibit. Nevertheless, good background material is important, to provide more information for those visitors that are interested in the details (or become interested by interacting with an exhibit first).
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Hello,

I’m planning on submitting a physical exhibit/hands-on module and have a few questions.

 

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Many of you might have visited maths museums (or even made maths museums or exhibits for them). What makes a good maths exhibit? I was recently thinking a lot about this question. And I did quite some “observation” of visitors in museums.

What do you like at the new MPE exhibition? What not? Which exhibits could and which should be improved?