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.