Palate of the discovery

Situation

The Palais of discovered the is a Musée and arts center scientific Paris IEN. It is located in the VIII {{E}} district, avenue Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was created in 1937 by Jean Perrin (Nobel Prize of physics in 1926) at the time of the international exhibition “Arts and Techniques in the Modern life”. He sees himself allotting 25.000 m ²: the western wing of the Large palace (or Palate of Antin) built by the Architect Albert-Felix-Theophilus Thomas.

Paul Valéry then writes of it an enthusiastic description which one can find in his collection Regards on the current world.

Positioning

The Palais obeys a properly French separation then: whereas the Science Museum with London and the Deutsches Museum in Munich make a point of treating face science and technology, he is worried as a majority of pure sciences, while what is technical will be lodged with only the Musée of Arts and Métiers. The Palate is also characterized by a solemn and spectacular aspect which forces silence and the respect, where the half-light is of rigor to emphasize the exposure of much of sections: fluorescence and phosphorescence, optics, discharges in gases, electrostatics, pendulum of Foucault, cathode rays, x-rays, biology, planetarium… This character will grow blurred little by little starting from the Années 1970.

The museum does not comprise more refreshment bar at that time. At the place of the current refreshment bar a gigantic column of glass showing was clearly that nature does not have any more horror of the last vacuum a certain height of water

A little history

Jean Perrin created the Palate of discovered in 1937 in order to show with all public “science being done”. It was then a question “of leaving science the laboratories”, to make take part the public in the birth of discovered sciences, primary source of progress.

70 years later, science evolved/moved but the initial objective remains of topicality. The Palate of the continuous discovery to cause scientific vocations which rarefy in the young people, increasingly solicited per many other activities. It contributes to make like and include/understand sciences with more 600.000 visitors each année.
Its ambition: to show the young people whom the modern Man can apprehend the new challenges of the world, in particular those which depend on scientific and technical developments. The scientific experiments and demonstrations which are the daily practices of the Palate develop the reasoning, the critical spirit and reinforce the independence of judgment, values more and more précieuses.

The great restoration decided in 2006 preserves this spirit, while modernizing the building and the exposures of the Palate of discovered 21e century, in close link with the current laboratories.

The Palate spirit: the museum of the oral mediation

By lack of time or of means, the majority of the great scientific experiments are often shown to the pupils only by diagrams and more rarely by films. The experiment is besides quickly forgotten, only the result, the theoretical law , is mémorisée.

However the majority of the young people who took an active part in demonstrations like those on electrostatics or liquid nitrogen memorize the phenomena best because they are associated with an outstanding experiment. The size of the experiments and the dramatizing of their presentation contribute to reinforce the long-term memory.

However, if one can interest in sciences by settings in situation and handling experimental, a scientific concept is not always easy to include/understand. Also, the dialog of the young people with a scientific mediator impassioned is an invaluable help and even often impossible to circumvent. Demonstrations of the Palate of the discovered one - presentations by mediators of experiments carried out in complicity with the public make take part the young people in an adventure which often gives a new indication of science to them.

A museum for science and its fundamental

For example, when a visitor installed in the inertial horse-gear launches a balloon to his neighbor of opposite, he discovers with surprise that the trajectory is curved. Such situations, in which the good sense is put at fault, are current in the 20 rooms of talks, during one of the 80 different presentations which are made there daily. This device in which the visitor is confronted with a diverting real experiment constitutes one of the keys to success of the Palate. Starting from a well targeted questioning, the mediator will further involve his public possible in an adventure from knowledge. It is science it even which likes, and not its packing.

Once its collected attention, the visitor can hitherto a41dernier $c-b1, e,10 $c-b26 ce $c-b16 $c-b43, bn,84 begin the course of discovered of a concept misunderstood! The interaction with the mediator and the real experimentation on line are pleasant and accessible powerful springs to return sciences.

A museum for all

If it is able to satisfy an informed public, the Palate of discovered is not therefore a museum reserved for some initiates. Its objective is above all the mediation .

For example, of the exposures as those on the dinosaurs attract more family many people, of which much would never have come in a place posting too directly its scientific character. This new public discovers the exposure with pleasure, with its great reconstitutions and its very realistic animated models of dinosaures.

The visitors are brought to play researcher: to observe, compare the scenes to have their own idea, then to discuss with a true scientist releasing from the fossil bones of their gangue. They were captivated by the presentation of gravitational experiments and by the passion of the scientific mediator hung them. Trained to make a intellectual effort beyond what seemed possible to them while entering the exposure, they leave there with the idea that science is not only one discipline of specialists, but which there exist some keys for the to include/understand and especially for to be interested in it.

Real experiments which cause vocations

It was well the idea of Jean Perrin which, as of 1937, wished to support the popularization of science by the experiments carried out in front of the public or by the visitors themselves . Almost unchanged since their origins taking into account their success, the demonstration on the Azote liquidates and the electrostatic belongs to the more demandées.

As Emmanuel Hamelin in his report/ratio of indicates it 2004, “the Palate of the discovery caused and causes still a great number of vocations and good number of the large scientists of today was sensitized there with the adventure of science . Moreover, via the activities of scientific mediation, many people can be initiated with the great phenomena, like with the new fields of the research activity. ”

Thus, 56% of the Parisian scientists of more than 30 years and 41% of the Parisian scientists of less than 30 years say that the Palate played a part in their scientific vocation. For Pierre-Gilles of Genoa, Nobel Prize of physics, “my vocation were born from the pleasure of discovering there experiments, those which one could make oneself and those that one explained us”…

The Palate of the discovery has the role of leaving the experiments the research laboratories by developing the interest of the young people for science. This step requires the collaboration between the researchers and of the mediators and museologists to transform the device of the initial experiment in order to make it comprehensible to all.

It is what was at the origin of the Palate of discovered and continues today with ''' “a researcher - a manipulation” '''. A place as the Palate of the discovery is a window of the research laboratories accessible to all the young people.

Access

The stations of subway which serve it are '' Fields-Elysées - Clemenceau '' (lines 1 and 13) or '' Franklin D. Roosevelt '' (lines 1 and 9).

With knowknowing

Jean Audouze, former director of the Institute of Astrophysics of Paris, was director of the Palate of Discovered between 1998 and 2004.

Jack Guichard, director current since 2004, is charged to carry out a complete restoration of the establishment. The exposures Light, lights (2005), Illusions (2006) and Seisms and volcanos (2007) are préfigurations of the new rooms. The Palate spirit, with its spectacular talk-demonstrations, will be maintained and developed.

The re-examined Palate of discovered the was founded in 1972 per Adolphe-Jean Pink, director of 1965 to 1983. Renamed Discovered in 1999, this monthly publication, intended for many people, is the reflection of the permanent and temporary activities of the Palate.

The Palate of the discovery, according to the senator who studied his case, “is connected with a digest of administrative and political dysfunctions”. In spite of visits always in increase, the hierarchical, too rigid and too old structure, and the enormous needs, the receipts are not enough to make all necessary works.

Random links: