Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more Feedback is on a quest to find the most niche science-themed tourist attractions in the world – by being told about them, rather than by actually visiting anything, as that would require a budget. Reader Earle McNeil advises us to explore Zagreb, Croatia. This city “must have the most museums per square kilometre of any town on the planet”, he says.
We initially didn’t believe this, but we looked them up and they are indeed real. The Museum of Broken Relationships was founded by two former lovers: film producer Olinka Vištica and sculptor Dražen Grubišić. After breaking up, they joked that they should set up a museum for all the personal items left over from their relationship, and a few years later, they did exactly that.
Two decades on, the museum is described by visitzagreb.hr as “the most popular museum in Zagreb”, and there is now a second permanent site in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Feedback isn’t sure this really counts as science-themed, except in the absolute broadest sense of the word “psychology”, in which case Heated Rivalry is also scientific and New Scientist should assign someone to review season two. However, the Museum of Hangovers surely does count, filled as it is with chemistry and neurophysiology.
Visitors can try crossing a tilted floor while wearing goggles that let you experience what it’s like to walk while drunk, or take the wheel of a drunk-driving simulator to see just how badly alcohol affects your ability to drive (spoiler: a lot). While researching these two institutions, Feedback fell down a glorious Wikipedia rabbit hole. We first learned about the Museum of Failure, a touring exhibition most recently found in Paris, that collects failed and unpopular products like the Apple Newton, Betamax video cassettes and the Tesla Cybertruck.
From there, we wandered afield from our science-themed mandate, but we do have to tell you that there is a Museum of Bad Art and that it has, or at least had, a competitor: the Museum of Particularly Bad Art. In our 19 September instalment, we reported that there are now thousands of scientific papers that reference song titles or lyrics by the Beatles in their headings. This prompted readers to wonder which other artists are being heavily referenced by researchers.
Simon Shuel wonders if anyone has done a similar analysis for the work of musician Frank Zappa. Feedback prowled the internet for a while, to little avail. All we could find were some species named after him.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
