If the Poleni Museum is the result of research and teaching carried out in Padua in the field of physics over the centuries, its function today goes beyond the conservation and enhancement of the past. It is a “living” collection that is enriched by what the reference scientific community produces.
The Museum is in fact careful to maintain the very nature of its collection by gathering the instruments linked to today’s Paduan physics, selecting the most significant devices and their prototypes, together with drawings, articles, photographs, and laboratory notes. This creates a documentary archive around each instrument that becomes “musealized.” The research and teaching devices of today become heritage for the future.
The Museum will thus be able to continue to tell future generations about the stories of scientists, their ideas, the unfolding of their experiments, and the intertwining of contacts established in various eras between the University of Padua and the Italian and international scientific community, highlighting the interdisciplinarity of knowledge and leading the public to reflect on the relationships between science and society between past and future.