A Physicist's Review: A Semester Working at the Maryland Science Center

It's now time to summarize the semester and my experience working at the Maryland Science Center as an Exhibits Intern. To recap, I really had no idea what to expect when I first started. Coming from a physics/science background, I only had one prior experience working at a museum – and that was doing research for a week at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Because of this, I didn't set out to do anything specifically, so I ended up dabbling in a little bit of everything. My class schedule only allowed for me to go in when the rest of the exhibits department was out of the office, but I did manage to catch the tail end of the workday every Friday from about 4pm to 8pm. Because of this, most of my hands-on experience was working with fabrication/maintenance (and some things left for me to do in the office).

Despite my schedule not matching up with most of the exhibit department office, I still feel that I learned a lot and got a really good feel for what goes into making exhibits at a science museum. I learned that Exhibits and Education were two separate departments, despite both influencing the experience for visitors and the fact that the education department were the ones on the floor often demonstrating and explaining exhibits. I also did not know that the Maryland Science Center is a privately owned museum, so money always needs to be considered in all of the things the museum is involved in.

In terms of exhibits and exhibit design in a science museum, I learned that there are many aspects which I previously looked over. Other than planning, there is fabrication, maintenance, audio/visual, and in some cases, exhibits are loaned and leased. I was surprised to see that the planning stage relies heavily on working with scientists and/or companies outside of the museum and even field trips in order to see something in real life before trying to replicate it for an exhibit. For example, ExxonMobil and NASA both have contributed largely to two separate exhibits in the museum. Also, the internet is an important tool in that many people in exhibits aren't necessarily scientists, so they need to quickly learn enough about a prospective topic in order to plan what next step to take in the planning process. I personally used Wikipedia a lot as a starting point for image searching or fact checking, as well as stock photo websites.

I learned that most things have to be made in-house. This includes anything from signs to the housing for TVs/monitors for interactive pieces (and the interactive software/video). There is also a lot of communication between different science museums. For example, I sent photographs of the Gas Model exhibit at the Maryland Science Center to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Many popular exhibits are copied to an extent from museum to museum – this is sort of similar to my experience in scientific research where you would try to replicate someone else's experiment as a starting point.

One thing that stood out was how everyone in exhibits, regardless of official job description, can at any time help out someone else. I know that my supervisor told me that it was common for people to help sand/paint. Another thing I did not expect is how the museum loans out some of their exhibits as well as leases some from the outside. This is important in both increasing visitors (because of visiting exhibits), and making money for the museum (by leasing out exhibits of their own).

I plan to return next semester and continue working in the exhibits department. However, this time my schedule should allow for me to go in during the workweek. I'm hoping that this will let me get more involved with the planning, and I want to be able to sit in on meetings as well. I have yet to use my science background to directly help in planning an exhibit, and since one of the things opening next semester will be astrobiology, I believe I should be able to really contribute.

One of the reasons why this blog exists is so that I could share my experience from the viewpoint of an engineer/scientist, so I will close with some advice/comments for “non-museum people”. More specifically, I suppose my advice is more catered towards science majors that want to see or try out what working in a education-based museum is like. For me, the most striking difference between this internship and the previous ones I have had at research centers is that I haven't really focused on one project at the museum. I have found myself searching for images and facts on Antarctica, astronomy, and extemophiles. I have also done some office work and wood-working. In the internships I have had in science research, you usually end up doing something over and over again with little tweaks. So far here, everything has basically been different, although I wouldn't say that this has been more challenging. Because I haven't really been involved with the planning process, I don't think I have had to use my creativity as I might have thought.

WoodWorking

You sometimes forget that almost everything that goes into an exhibit needs to be fabricated in-house. For example, this past week I helped sand and paint wooden arrows that are going to be used for the Antarctica exhibit. The idea here is to create one of those sign posts that points to different major cities and states how many miles you are from them. Similar to this:

I hadn't really done any wood-work (like shop class in high school) before, so it was pretty neat to be able to both use power tools and paint these pieces. It will probably be even cooler when the actual things I worked on go out for display on the floor.

The workshop is in the basement, and it's a little surprising how you don't realize that there would be one if you didn't know. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the offices to the Exhibits and Education department are downstairs as well as the workshop and the audio-visual workshop too. The offices for the CFO and CEO of the museum are on the 4th floor (which is the same as the roof access to the observatory on the top of the building. You definitely get a better grasp on how much there is behind the scenes at a museum after working at one. For example, going back to my Spring Break experience at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, there are tons and tons of cabinets and hallways filled with preserved specimens that the public never gets to see. It's a bit different at the Maryland Science Center since there's really no collection of specimens, but there does need to be a lot of space to fabricate many of the exhibits that visitors see on the floor.

There's only a few more weeks left in the semester, but to look forward to next semester -- I'll actually be able to go in on a weekday in the Spring. Hopefully this will give me a better idea about the logistics and planning behind the exhibits. So far this year I've only been able to get to the museum around 4pm on Fridays, right around when people in the office start to leave (and the weekends when no one is there). Lastly, go see Harry Potter in IMAX at the museum if you hadn't already. =)

Hubble 3D

This past weekend was pretty light in terms of work, so I used it as an opportunity to experience the entire museum. I actually have not been able to do everything in terms of the whole visitor experience yet, and this was the best chance to do so since I began interning at the Maryland Science Center.

I actually noticed some displays and exhibits for the first time. For example, in the Dinosaurs part of the museum, they had a live lizard and a live African bullfrog (which was absolutely massive -- like a pile of snot the size of a small plate). There are a surprising amount of live animals in the entire complex. In addition to the ones in the Dinosaurs exhibit, there are live blue crabs and terrapins in the Chesapeake area on the third floor. I will have to look into how the museum keeps everything alive and happy, because so far I have not heard from anyone in the Exhibits Department that they are the ones who take care of the creatures.

Saturday was also the first time I saw an IMAX 3D movie at the Maryland Science Center. Luckily for me, employees get free tickets to movies there, so I finally decided to see Hubble 3D. To give a brief overview, Hubble 3D is a 45 minute film narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio about the service missions that have been performed on the Hubble Space Telescope. Hopefully most people are familiar with how when Hubble was first launched into space, its images were blurry because of a slight deformation in the telescope's mirror (this error was actually pretty tiny, but resulted in huge effects in the optics -- that's my astrophysics background kicking in). The visuals were pretty amazing, both the actual footage of astronauts performing spacewalks to repair components and the 3D animations of nebulae and star-systems. I could actually see a little girl in the audience reach up multiple times during the film and try to catch the objects coming out of the screen-- hopefully a sign that the movie will inspire some people to further investigate this field of science.

Anyways, there was also the Antarctica event that I mentioned in the last blog post. I didn't specifically look for any of the images I helped find, but the exhibit was on the third floor. There was a special talk given on the demonstration stage aimed at the children and research posters from an expedition with people ready to talk about their findings with the visitors. I have found that at a science museum, the exhibits people work very closely with those from the education department. For example, the talk given on Antarctica was given through the education people, yet the floor pieces that went along with this theme were put together by the Exhibits Department. The people at each poster were from Education though.

The one thing that I didn't get to do that I will try to accomplish in the next few weeks is seeing a planetarium presentation. The one called "Dark Matters" was actually created in conjunction with a few professors from the Hopkins Physics & Astronomy Department. I actually first inquired about working at the science museum because I had seen the story of the collaboration between JHU and the Maryland Science Center a couple years ago regarding this project. It should also be noted that some of the professors in the department are world experts on Dark Energy and Dark Matter -- two of the most exotic and enticing ideas in modern science in my opinion.

In conclusion, this weekend was a good break from the office work I had been doing lately. I think that's the benefit of working in a place like a museum; taking a break and just walking around the facilities is probably better here than in most workplaces.

COLD!

So it's November now, and the weather is getting cold. Also, I've been working on things relating to the cold at the musem -- namely, things for the Antarctica and Astrobiology exhibits. Just thought I would give a much needed update since the last post, so here it is:

The museum is currently in the planning stages of a couple exhibits, and I have been searching for photographs and pictures to use. The first deals with astrobiology. I actually have already had a small taste of what astrobiology is from researching some topics related to the field a while back in this internship.

To sum it all up, astrobiology is the study of biology/life beyond Earth. It is believed that life in space would look a lot like the organisms that can survive in the harshest climates on our very own planet. These organisms are called extremophiles, and I have been searching for photographs of these creatures. Most extremophiles are single celled bacteria, but the most interesting one I found was called a "methane ice worm" (pictured below)

I also have been looking for pictures that illustrate how coronagraphs and interferometry work in terms of optical astronomy. Basically, coronagraphs work by blocking out the sun/star so that you can see fainter signals in the background (i.e. a planet). Interferometry uses destructive interference to basically cancel out foreground/background light so that fainter images can be seen as well. It's been interesting to see how much I've gotten to learn about different disciplines just from searching for photographs and pictures dealing with astrobiology.

The other exhibit that may be opening soon is about Antarctica. I also worked on finding images that portray this landscape (i.e. emperor penguin, moss/lichen, protective clothing, and an arctic tern). In addition to this, I did some clerical work in helping to fill out an Excel spreadsheet containing all of the different vendors the Maryland Science Center Exhibits Department deals with. Vendors include stores/catalogs where they get their build supplies to video services and custom fabrication companies. Despite being very "office work" type stuff, it was interesting to see how many different things go into a functioning exhibits department.

Basically in recent weeks I've been doing research and computer-related things. I still have yet to see my first IMAX movie here, so I think that will happen soon. Next week is supposed to be the installation of the Antarctica exhibit so I hope to help out with that or at least check it out during its initial stages to when it opens to the public.

1/2 October

Fall Break and taking the GREs sort of disrupted my rhythm, but here is an update of what I've been up to in the first half of October.

I have been having a lot of problems with my office computer lately. I've had to call IT each time I've gone in so hopefully that gets resolved soon because I can't even get Windows to load on most occasions. It's a little surprising how much I use the computer -- especially email. In these few weeks I've emailed the University of Maryland College Park Medical Campus about procuring a set of plastinated healthy lungs for the Bodies Exhibit. Apparently a lot of the other plastinated organs that we use were loaned to us by the medical school. I was also given the task of photographing the Gas Model exhibit and email them to the Exploratorium (the  well-renowned science museum in San Francisco). The Gas Model piece is actually a very cool illustration of gas molecules and pressure. Bouncy balls represent air molecules, and as they randomly bounce around they push on a piston-like piece of board. I attached some of the photos below:

The most exciting thing of recent is probably the opening of the Pirates/Shipwrecks Exhibit in the traveling exhibits hall. I was able to see the installation of all the pieces before it opened, walk through the exhibit on the first day of its public opening, and this past weekend when almost everything was finished in it. I wrote a brief review below, but be sure to check it out in person before the museum replaces it in january:

START!

I began interning at the Maryland Science Center this past Friday, and this is the accompanying post to go along with that (posting this from the work computer).

First of all, getting down to Inner Harbor was incredibly easy (and best of all: free). I took the JHMI shuttle from Homewood to Penn Station, and then took the Purple Line of the Charm City Circulator from there to the Light & Lee St. stop (#321 I believe). The only thing is that it took about an hour because I had to wait for both of the buses for a little while.

I have have a desk area in the basement of the museum, in the same room with nearly everyone else in the Exhibits Department. It's pretty interesting down here -- there are office spaces but also workbenches and construction areas where a lot of fabrication happens. There are also old exhibit pieces lying around that are either waiting repair/maintenance or are essentially retired.

On my first day, I briefly researched some terms regarding Astrobiology for a new exhibit they are in the early stages of planning for. Also, I began familiarizing myself with the building by walking around the 3 levels that the public sees in addition to the basement and 4th floor. There is a museum convention taking place next week, so one of my tasks was to help seal these CD/DVD leaflets that the Maryland Science Center is going to hand out in order to promote their new traveling exhibit, "Cells: The Universe Inside Us", which is a smaller version of the permanent installment here. I learned that despite being named the Maryland Science Center, most of the funding comes from the museum's own profits and outside sponsors. Leasing exhibits is one of the ways the museum brings in funds.

On Saturday (today), I also got to see how a traveling exhibit gets installed. The new Shipwrecks exhibit is on lease for 3 months until January, and its going to be open to the public on Oct. 1. It is really interesting to see the unpacking of artifacts, interactive media, etc. I never previously thought about the logistics of installing new exhibits, but there really is a lot to think about in terms of hiding the working guts of soem things, the layout, the lighting, and the overall flow and feel of a space.

I think that is it for now, so far this is a very exciting place to work at, and it is such a change of pace from my usual internship in scientific research.