Chemistry in Kyoto: A History of the Institute for Chemical Research

Look for

• The 1942 nitrile rubber sample

  Rubber from the institute's 1942 trial run, made at 200 kg a day by Furukawa's monovinyl acetylene method before production moved to Sumitomo Chemical's Niihama plant.

• The vinylon materials

  The institute's heritage-listed vinylon set is a fibre-spinning test apparatus and a 1942 plan for a 'wool-like synthetic No. 1' factory, its cover in Sakurada's own hand.

• The synthetic oil records

  Materials and samples from the institute's cheap iron-catalyst route to synthetic oil, begun in 1927 and run in a full-size reactor at Takikawa, Hokkaido, from 1944.

• The polyethylene notebooks

  Design drawings, research notebooks and reports from the 1951 to 1953 pilot runs at Kyoto University that started Sumitomo Chemical's polyethylene production.

• The entrance-exam corner

  Real national Center Test chemistry questions on synthetic rubber, vinylon and polyethylene, to answer after looking at the displays; the answer key is on the museum's website.

Good for

• Cheap Culture
• Locals Who've Seen It All
• Nerding Out

With kids

Free for under-18s and for primary, middle and high school students. The quiz corner uses real Center Test chemistry questions, so it is pitched at high-school level.