The exhibition Under your Skin takes you on a journey of discovery into the human body.

How can we humans be so alike – and yet so unique? How does our fascinating body work, and how does it change depending on our lifestyle, and as we get older?

The exhibition is packed with entertaining and instructive experiments through which you can experience and explore your own body.

A wonderful chance to get right under the skin of the human body. A distinctive feature is the so-called ‘skin sails’ that separate the activities and guide visitors through the exhibition. Photo: David Trood

A journey under the skin

Just as the bodily systems work closely together to ensure the proper functioning of the whole body, the activities that make up the exhibition are all naturally and closely interconnected.

The activities are, however, divided into four areas:

• From cell to body
• The blood circulation – the body’s motorway system
• Muscles and bones – the musculoskeletal system
• The brain – the body’s control centre

At a special demonstration bar, the Experimentarium’s exhibition pilots do daily demonstrations and conduct experiments involving, for example, the dissection of organs.

Here are some of the many activities in Under your Skin:

Guess a body sound

Your body makes a lot of noise, but do you actually know where in your body all the various sounds come from?

Participate in a guessing game that focuses on the whole cacophony of sounds playing in your body, for example as you breathe in and out, digest your food, and when your heart beats. Many of these sounds we don’t normally notice, but they tell us something about how our bodies work and about how healthy we are.

Measure your fitness rating

How fit are you? Measure your fitness with a step test. Your fitness rating tells you how good your body is at transporting oxygen, and thus at making it possible for your muscles to work hard. You can also try two other tests to get an overall assessment of your physical shape.

See the heat from your body

The heat-sensitive live camera shows the hot and cold spots on the surface of your body. The greater the blood supply to an area of the skin, the warmer it will be.

You can compare your body surface temperature to the surface temperatures of other visitors, and to those of the people on the big wall picture. The wall picture also gives you facts about why some parts of the body are warmer than others.

Kill a virus

Your immune system helps to fight infections caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi. And it is extremely efficient – even if you sometimes fall ill.

As part of the exhibition, you can have a go at the virus game, and try using the immune system to fight a virus. You must be on the ball, because you have to work on many fronts when the horrible virus enters the body and tries to convert the cells into virus factories.

Take a 3D look at the brain

The brain is the most complex organ in your body – perhaps in the universe. Equipped with the latest imaging technologies, researchers are trying to understand how the brain works, and the exhibition is your chance to look over their shoulder.

Equipped with 3D glasses and an advanced 3D computer program, you can explore the human brain and get a completely new experience of the brain and its structures.

Under your Skin is funded by