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The Museum of Mathematics

Opening Hours
Today: 10am–5pm
Fri:
10am–5pm
Sat:
10am–5pm
Sun:
10am–5pm
Mon:
10am–5pm
Tues:
10am–5pm
Wed:
10am–5pm
Location
11 East 26th Street
Neighborhoods
The Museum of Mathematics 1 Museums Flatiron

I first encountered MoMath as a traveling exhibit at a school on the upper east side, where they were attempting to find funding for a math museum. Honestly, I would never have entered the exhibition on my own volition. My husband, however, winner of his high school's math award, an economics major at Brown and the person responsible for getting me through high school math many years ago, convinced me to accompany him. Jumping ahead three years, the two of us were both surprised and thrilled when we were riding our bikes on 26th and discovered that the museum now has a permanent home. Simply by opening the pi-shaped front door handles and entering the 19,000 square foot facility, math enthusiasts will stand together in awe. Visitors are able to take full advantage of the exhibits, with explanatory screens offering different levels of complexity, depending on one's interest, and there are live museum guides to answer the many questions of how and why. While the first impression might be that of a children's museum, as one encounters the square-wheeled trike ride or the gravity driven "cars" on the Tracks of Galileo, that notion is quickly dispelled on the lower level. There, we encountered the Enigma Cafe, where twenty-somethings were engrossed (some seemed as if they had been there for days) in puzzle solving a variety of objects, from disentangling intertwined metal to arranging geometric shapes into prescribed patterns. Although he was intrigued by what they were doing, my husband was content to hop onto the Math Square, a huge computer screen built into the floor that marked his every move with a lighted square. A few days later, when we were with our own twenty something crowd, he whipped out a piece of paper and a pen and explained some of what he had witnessed and quizzed those at the table who were also math wizards. Billed as "the coolest thing that ever happened to math," MoMath holds rotating exhibits and programs to excite adults and children, alike, about this academic discipline. I have encountered many fascinating places in my travels across the Manhattan side streets, but without a doubt, this is the one that captured my husband's heart.

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