Review: Science Museum’s Wonderlab for an educational family day out

‘Bang!’

Our visit to the Science Museum’s Wonderlab: The Equinor Gallery, which we had been invited to review, started with a bang.

Literally.

And there were several of them.

Soon after arriving we made a beeline for the show space, where visitors get to enjoy live experiments and demonstrations performed by enthusiastic and experienced staff members, and on the Sunday morning we visited, The Rocket Show came up first.

During this live show, visitors could learn about Newton’s three laws and the science behind direction, speed and power of rockets. In addition, there were opportunities for both eager parents and children alike to shout out answers and a few were also selected to help out with demonstrations on stage.

The Rocket Show featured loud bangs, and little ones were handed ear defenders to use for explosions demonstrating the science of fire and rockets. This was a pretty exciting way to learn about the link between scientific concepts and a specific industry.

There’s now also a new live show on the programme in the Wonderlab – The Wonder Show, which explores different zones of the interactive gallery (sounds, maths, light, forces and matter). Similar to The Rocket Show, The Wonder Show includes a number of live experiments, with one being a Ruben’s tube demonstration that lets visitors see a fire ‘dance’ to a tune as sound waves are mimicked in the flames.

In addition to looking out for show times on a visit, other highlights in the Wonderlab include the in-gallery demonstrations. On our visit, there were plenty of other demonstrations and talks at regular intervals, and we heard about the solar system, electricity and chemicals in different talks on the floor in between trying out a variety of activities ourselves.

The favourite section is the forces area, where children 1 metre and above can try out sliding on different surfaces to learn about friction. In this section there are also pulley chairs, one that is easy for a child to pull themselves up and one heavy one.

There’s also a rotating area, demonstrating how a figure skater can spin faster. In the maths area, we particularly enjoy the Tessallion wall, learning about how maths is demonstrated in nature with beehives producing tessalion patterns, for example.

We also liked building 3D shapes, starting with simple cubes and ending the visit with a cool sphere.

In my view, it can be incredibly inspiring for children to learn in an interactive environment like this where they can test rules of science – and perhaps even experience it all with their very own parent science buff? The Wonderlab is one of my favourite educational spaces to visit in London with children, and it’s one I know we’ll continue to go to again and again, exploring different concepts as the children grow older.

Tags: Attractions, Family attractions, Family day out, London, London with kids, Review, Science, Science Museum, Wonderlab