Museums have changed. They are no   1    places where one “should” go but now they are places  2    .

At a science museum in Canada, you can feel your hair stand on end as harmless electricity 3 through your body. At the Children's Museum in New York, you can play an African drum. There are no “Do Not Touch” signs in some 4museums in the USA.

      More and more museum directors   5    that people learn best when they can become part of what they are   6   . In many science museums, the visitors are encouraged to touch, listen, operate and experiment so as to discover scientific rules for themselves.

The purpose is 7 to provide fun, but also to help people feel at home in the world of science. If people don't understand science, they 8 afraid of it, and if they are afraid of science, they will not make the best use of it.

One cause of all these changes is the increase in wealth and spare time.     9  cause is the growing number of young people in the population. Many of them are college students or college graduates. They see things in a new and different way. They want art that they can take part in. The same is true of science and history.

         The old museums have been changing and the government is encouraging the building of new, modern museums. In the United States and Canada, there are more than 6, 000 museums, almost twice as    10   as there were 25 years ago.