From studies of visitors' behavior, museums have also learned that people tend to turn right when they enter a museum gallery and to leave by the first open door, that labels of 100 words or more often go unread, and that positioning is everything. More recently, the Franklin Institute's Ms. Borun identified seven exhibit characteristics out of a possible list of a dozen or more that promoted learning in family groups. While many of these characteristics sound like common sense, Ms. Borun says, they are not found in many museums. Like many museum researchers, she has concentrated on the learning that goes on in families because families make up the largest sector of museum-goers. Some studies also show that family groups tend to spend more time at exhibits than do other types of visitors.
Children talk more about the exhibits they see when they are with their parents.
Other research has looked at the misconceptions visitors bring to museums, and whether exhibits dispel or reinforce those notions. The problem is especially common in science. For example, in one of Ms. Borun's studies, half the visitors to an exhibit on gravity harbored one of two misconceptions on the subject. Many visitors mistakenly assumed, for example, that air pressure causes gravity or that gravity is generated by the earth's rotation. The Franklin Institute researchers also found, though, that they could dispel the visitors' mistaken ideas with an exhibit built to demonstrate that a ball could fall in a tube with or without air.