• New York Hall of Science

  47-01 111th St., Flushing, 718-699-0005

  There are lots of kids’ museums and plenty of play spaces, but the Hall of Science combines the best of both, with an indoor lab as well as a 30,000-square-foot science-themed outdoor fun zone. Built as a pavilion for the 1964–65 World’s Fair, the wavy Richard Serra–ish structure is now home to several nasa-castoff rockets, a pitching cage where kids can learn about velocity, and a surfboard ride that illustrates the physics of balancing. Even the playground is instructive: A steel jungle gym offers a lesson in tensile strength, and a giant seesaw helps kids understand levers. Worth a trip on the 7 train just for the cow-eye dissections—if only because today’s preteen gross-out enthusiast is tomorrow’s surgeon.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine