Hotels near the Sensation Dundee

Open your mind to the possibilities of science at Sensation Dundee, which celebrates the scientific accomplishments of the city and adds a sense of fun and adventure to understanding not just the universe, but also our everyday lives.

Opened in July 2000, one of Tayside's Millennium projects, the £5 million Sensation Dundee aims to put the fun back into science. Sixty exhibits aim to entertain, educate and inspire a future generation of scientists.

Laid out in zones which investigate not only the senses but various facets of our existence - light, sound, position, touch, heat, taste and smell - there are multimedia presentations, live shows, interactive exhibits and a computer area appropriately housed in the "Technosphere," as well as laboratory experiments.

Young budding scientists can climb into a giant nose and slide out like a sneeze, sit inside an eyeball, sniff out pheromones, use face morphing to age or change sex, experience what it must be like to do keyhole surgery or lose their sense of up and down on a gyroscope. Visitors can also see what their voices look like and surf the internet in the Technosphere. All of this builds up to an action-packed scientific adventure.

Those interested in taking up a career in science would be following some famous Dundee scientists, including James Bowman Lindsay who produced, for the first time, sustainable electric light and developed telegraphy (from which digital communications have developed) in the River Tay, Sir James Alfred Ewing, who developed seismography and James Chalmers, who invented the postage stamp.

The city itself has a strong science bent. With two universities (Dundee and Abertay), it is a centre for world excellence in the study of cancer and diabetes and, in the Mills Observatory, has the only full-time public observatory in Britain. In the Information Technology (IT) field, with NCR based in the city, more than half of the worlds ATMs ("automated teller machines") come from Dundee.