Walking through the doors into the display galleries, visitors are met with a breathtaking view of the Mississippi River Valley and Harriet Island. We wanted people to feel surprised and have things to discover, not to feel stuffy and be led around as though they were in a maze. And to that end, Cers was certainly successful. The brand new River Gallery exhibit, the only display on the entrance level, offers information on the Mississippi and other rivers against the picturesque backdrop of the Mississippi River valley, the High Bridge, and the West Side flats. After walking across a carpet imitation of the Mississippi's narrow beginning at Itasca State Park, visitors find artifacts such as rocks, trees and the skeleton of a beaver that in its prime weighed 250 pounds.
Visitors can even sit in the captain's seat.
Moving down to the next level of the museum, visitors see parts of various other displays and can decide which ones to go to first. From here you can catch little glimpses of everything. The human body gallery, another display new to the Science Museum, is just below the River Gallery. Plaster casts of real bodies depict different stages of aging, pregnancy and other human conditions. One display allows visitors to look at microscope slides of various parasites found in the body.