I took the Caltrain to San Jose this morning to visit The Tech Museum of Innovation, otherwise known as The Tech. As the name suggests, this is a science and technology museum and I must say they have done an amazing job with it. I suspect having a lot of high-profile sponsors and contributors (HP, Microsoft, Accenture, Innogen, etc.) has helped, but even so there are a lot of ingenious exhibits. They currently have a large Genetics exhibition, which includes a wet lab where visitors can insert a green fluorescent protein gene into bacteria, and then view the results of their exhibit on the museum website, and a demonstration of how to extract DNA from animal tissue by precipitating it in alcohol. They also do an excellent job of looking at a lot of the ethical issues around genetics, including genetic testing in pregnancy, test-tube babies, and inherited genetic diseases.

The reason for my visit was that I have applied to volunteer there, so look out for more posts about the museum in future!

Update: Click here to see a picture of my glowing green bacteria! (It takes a moment to load).