The Montshire Museum of Science is a hands-on, self-guided science museum located in Norwich, Vermont, in the United States. It has roughly 150,000 visitors annually. The museum, including the building and nature trails, is located on over 110 acres (445,000 m²) of land. It has exhibits on anatomy, math, astronomy, mechanics, and natural history, among others. Its live animal exhibits include a hive of honeybees that is connected to the outdoors and a colony of leafcutter ants. Outside of the museum building, there is a two acre (8,000 m²) Science Park including a scaled model of the solar system (Pluto is located a two-mile (3 km) walk away), and exhibits on light, sound, and motion; among the sound exhibits there are "Whisper dishes" (parabolic dishes 40 feet (12 m) apart) and a musical fence built by Paul Matisse, grandson of painter Henri Matisse.
The Montshire Museum was first established in 1976 across the Connecticut River in Hanover, New Hampshire, and moved to Norwich in 1989. The name Montshire is taken from "Vermont" and "New Hampshire". It was opened after Dartmouth College's natural history museum, from which the Montshire received its original collections, was closed.
In addition to its year-round exhibits the Montshire runs numerous educational programs for children, adults, and teachers.
Famous quotes containing the words museum and/or science:
“Things will not mourn you, people will.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 191, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)