Stephanie in the City of Lights: Musée des Arts et Métiers (Arts and Crafts Museum)

So since my classes happen to end at noon on Wednesdays, I've decided from here on out, unless I have too much work, to visit a different museum every Wednesday afternoon. There are a few things motivating this decision.
1) I like museums.
2) As a student in the European Union, I get FREE entry to all national and municipal museums (in France, at least).
3) I could go on weekends, but I figure most museums will be mobbed then.
4) I like museums.
So I cracked open my handy-dandy Fodor's Paris 2011 and evidently a few museums caught my eye, but this one was close by (walking distance) and looked really interesting and was open today. So off I headed! It's actually in the 3rd arrondissement, which is just to the south of the 10th, and the bus I take to art history (see previous post as well) also goes right past it, but I never knew what it was because from the outside it just looks like a church. In fact, it is a church! But it's been converted into a science museum! How cool is that? And also kind of weird when one considers the often complex relation between religion and science. So it was neat to see them combined here! (Next on my list of things to investigate since seeing them from the bus window: le quartier de l'horloge, literally the clock quarter, although I haven't spotted the clock yet, and Châtelet, which looks like a big tower or fountain or something.)
Anyway, the Musée des Arts et Métiers was really cool--as the title of this post indicates, that translates to the Arts and Crafts Museum, but it's really far more like a science museum. They have an original Foucault Pendulum (some of you may have seen the one at the entrance to the Museum of Science in Boston). So I checked that out, and--good news--it confirmed that the world is still turning, and I also actually learned how it works, so that was cool, too. And it's suspended in the church part of the museum, so it has a glorious backdrop as well. But that was near the end of my visit. I started, actually, with a little replica of Liberté éclairant le monde (The Statue of Liberty), which stands outside the entrance to the museum. There was another replica inside, too.... Also inside, I saw a lot of really cool old cars and old bicycles and models of early airplanes, and model trains, and neat gears, and lots of lathes, and old sewing machines, and automatons.... I didn't see everything there was, even! I never even made it to the top floor! I'll definitely be returning at some point, because it was all fascinating! There is also one part of the museum with a vaulted ceiling in stone, which, a museum worker explained to me, is made to carry voices so that lepers could confess to monks without infecting them. (Here's how it works: the leper stands in one corner of the room, facing into the corner, and the monk stands in the corner diagonally opposite, also facing into the corner. The parabola shape of the ceiling carries sounds perfectly across, without projecting them to the whole room! It reminded me of those little things you see in playgrounds sometimes, the little speaker-type things that are sort of shaped like mailboxes, and there's one on either side of the playground, and somehow magically you talk into one and your voice comes out the other! I'm pretty sure that's not working on the same principle, but the effect was quite similar.) And of course, the building itself was at least as interesting to look at as the objects on display! Of course, there was the stained glass in the church, but the architecture throughout was really nice. (Imagine high ceilings, often with carvings or painted in interesting colors, airy rooms, enormous windows, wooden floors...) I didn't take very many photos because I was so caught up in looking at everything, but here are the few I did take: