BIZARRE surgically enhanced babies, a disembodied teenager and a “room of pain” — these are some of the exhibits in a museum aimed at switching a generation of young South Australians on to science careers.

The Museum of Discovery — to be known just as MOD — is set to open next week in UniSA’s new $247 million Health Innovation Building on North Tce.

Aimed at giving people aged 15-25 experiences that will change their perceptions of science, partly through a fusion with art, the museum has an ambitious target of 200,000 annual visitors within three to five years.

Exhibitions costing up to $1 million each will be changed every six months to keep people coming back. Admission will be free and opening hours stretched into early evening to encourage after-school visits.

Inside UniSA’s incredible new Museum of Discovery media_camera In the ‘Feeling Human’ exhibition in the Futures Gallery. Picture: Bianca De Marchi 1 of 24 media_camera UniSA PhD students Hayley Schultz, Jim Hughes and Jess Heatlie inside the Universal Gallery at the new UniSA MOD building. Picture: Bianca De Marchi 2 of 24 media_camera An installation from the ‘Birds and Bees’ display in the Futures Gallery. Picture: Bianca De Marchi 3 of 24 media_camera In the ‘Feeling Human’ exhibition in the Futures Gallery. Picture: Bianca De Marchi 4 of 24 nav_small_close Want to see more?( 20 more photos in collection )Continue to full gallery nav_small_left nav_small_right

MOD director Dr Kristin Alford said the goals were to “change the culture of how we think about science”, while showcasing UniSA and other research. Visiting the museum would also help to break down barriers for young people from families who had never been to university, she said.

“If we can have people who say ‘I didn’t think science was for me, but this is great’, that’s good,” Dr Alford said.

media_camera UniSA MOD museum director Dr Kristin Alford. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

The museum’s permanent centrepiece is Science on a Sphere, a giant suspended globe which at the touch of a screen transforms from the earth into the sun, moon or any of the planets.

It will initially be used to link astronomy with Aboriginal stories about the heavens.

But hundreds of datasets allow for projections on the sphere, including cloud movements, carbon dioxide and aerosol concentrations, and mapping of Facebook friendships around the world.

One gallery devoted to the exploration of pain has chairs, left, that deliver light electric shocks to daring visitors under coloured lights and distracting pictures, showing how perception of pain changes under different conditions.

In another, a disarming animatronic head, modelled on an 18-year-old Adelaide boy, “wakes up” and speaks as visitors approach, posing questions about artificial intelligence and the differences between man and machine.

The most confronting exhibit is a series of lifelike, yet strangely enhanced, sculptures of babies, each with a feature designed to help it thrive under future conditions.

One has extra folds of skin on its head for faster heat dissipation, so it could grow up to work in high temperatures in a world hit by global warming.

The MOD’s odd galleries

Birds and Bees: Visitors walk through a tunnel as the walls appear to shift from disconcerting projections of vertical and horizontal lines. It’s tied to research on birds and bees and how they avoid obstacles such as trees (the vertical lines) in flight, with implications for aviation.

Prosthetic Reality: Using augmented reality technology, a phone app unlock animations and sounds in 50 artworks and invites visitors to think about the future of art.

Epiphany’s Genesis 2: In MOD’s street gallery, “alien plant” installations fuse art with the physics principles of light.