Explore brilliant bodies and the ghost of Manchester’s past at the Science and Industry Museum

If you’re looking for a fun, inspiring day out that the entire family can enjoy over the October half term, then the Science and Industry Museum has you covered.

Fresh from its grand reopening earlier this month, Power Hall: The Andrew Law Gallery offers guests the chance to walk with the ghosts of Manchester’s past, immersing them in the sights, sounds and smells of times gone by.

Follow the footsteps of 19th-century railway workers and see engines built in the 1830s brought back to life. Visitors can even peer inside Pender, a steam locomotive from the 1870s, to reveal its spectacular insides.

Hidden details lurking in the shadows inside Power Hall will be revealed with a special ‘Looking Closely’ guide, created specifically for half term visitors. The guide will help explore the lesser-noticed details on the engines and locomotives inside the gallery.

In the museum’s family-favourite special exhibition, Operation Ouch: Brains, Bogies and You, you can venture through the senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste in a deep dive inside the human body, dodging icky earwax, squeezing past sticky snot and steering clear of saliva.

There are smatterings of supernatural throughout the exhibition, including coins touched by Henry VIII. Five hundred years ago, people believed that illness could be cured by the touch of a king or queen, and the King gave coins he touched to sick people in the hope of healing them.

Visitors can also fill up their Halloween bag of tricks with some brain-altering illusions that prove you can’t always believe what you see, including ghost dots appearing in blank spaces, straight lines being bent by the brain, circles seeming to spiral and even faces appearing upside down.

Operation Ouch: Brains, Bogies and You is part of the Science and Industry Museum’s programme of special exhibitions. Tickets can be purchased here.

Other special events available every day during half term include the ultimate gaming experience, Power Up. Visitors can rock out with Guitar Hero, see a whole new world with virtual reality headsets or show off their moves with Just Dance on the big screen. Annual passes are available to purchase, meaning gamers can unlock a new level of play and gain access to the experience for a whole year.

Power Hall is a free gallery, accessible as part of a free museum admission ticket that also gives access to the Revolution Manchester gallery, which explored ideas that started life in the city and went on to change the world, as well as family-favourites Experiment Gallery and Textiles Gallery, which continue to bring science to life and explore how Manchester’s identity is woven in with the cotton industry. Free tickets can also be booked via the museum’s website.

The Science and Industry Museum’s half term programme runs from Sat 25 Oct – Sun 2 Nov.