A trip to the American Museum of Natural History
On Monday June 13 I made the trip to the American Museum of Natural History. This huge museum is only one subway stop away from me, and it seemed like the ideal choice for a place to go to beat the extremely oppressive summer heat.
The first thing that I noticed before entering the museum was the various references to Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt is one of my most admired persons -- he lived an amazing life and always was looking out for the welfare of the public. That he was a Republican and fighting against big business and for wildlife conservation is quite ironic by today's political standards. I wish there were more like Teddy Roosevelt in our government now. I highly recommend the Teddy Roosevelt Biographies by Edmund Morris: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex. Bully!
Entrance to the AMNH. Statue of Teddy Roosevelt in front
About the museum itself. Its absolutely humongous. There is so much to see and learn there. I spent about 5 hours in the museum on Monday and I guess I covered in detail only about 10% of the exhibits. Heck, I'm not even sure I visited all the rooms in the building. For those of you who know my education background and interests, this is the type of place that I would love to spend many days in. And I probably will, i still have the rest of the summer to go. For those that dont know -- my degrees are in Electrical Engineering, at one point I was in a Neuroscience PhD program, and I have a fascination with history and understanding different cultures. The AMNH contains a wide variety of exhibits in a diverse set of fields. Being natural history there are the usual exhibits on various types of animals, plants, forests, landscapes, etc. But there also is a section on human biology, various cultures from across the globe (not sure how this fits into "Natural" history), meteorites, gems, among others. And then there's the adjoining Rose Center for Earth and Space. So you definitely get a lot of stuff for the $13 "donation".
Being in a museum with this much stuff really makes one think and prioritize their interests. You can try to get more involved with something already familiar, or you can try to discover a whole new set of interests. I tend to choose the former, I'm not sure how much I can get interested in the details of african mammals or rocks, etc. Luckily I have a pretty good background in a variety of fields that are represented at the museum so I had a lot of stuff to examine. My museum highlights were the video presentation on DNA, all the things about cultures of peoples, especially those of Asia, the big bang and the spiral walk of time. Its especially interesting to see the presentation on the various scales of measurement in the universe, from the size of the universe (around 10^26m) to the smallest particles known (10^-12m). There's way too much that I can say about these exhibits, and for brevity I will not cover them here. But feel free to email if you want more details.
One more thing on exhibits -- the featured exhibit during this time was on Dinosaurs. It was quite an impressive exhibit, with the highlights being a few fully assembled dinosaur skeletons that were made of the actual bone/fossil (not a cast). Plus I saw quite a lot of school kids out there, and I always take joy in watching children learn and play. That exhibit reminded me of some classic Calvin and Hobbes cartoons of when Calvin goes to see the dinosaurs.
T-Rex Skeleton Exhibit
Kids at the Dinosaru Exhibit. The tour guide (on the right) is whistling to get the kids attention -- either that or she's about to hurl :)
The first thing that I noticed before entering the museum was the various references to Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt is one of my most admired persons -- he lived an amazing life and always was looking out for the welfare of the public. That he was a Republican and fighting against big business and for wildlife conservation is quite ironic by today's political standards. I wish there were more like Teddy Roosevelt in our government now. I highly recommend the Teddy Roosevelt Biographies by Edmund Morris: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex. Bully!
Entrance to the AMNH. Statue of Teddy Roosevelt in front
About the museum itself. Its absolutely humongous. There is so much to see and learn there. I spent about 5 hours in the museum on Monday and I guess I covered in detail only about 10% of the exhibits. Heck, I'm not even sure I visited all the rooms in the building. For those of you who know my education background and interests, this is the type of place that I would love to spend many days in. And I probably will, i still have the rest of the summer to go. For those that dont know -- my degrees are in Electrical Engineering, at one point I was in a Neuroscience PhD program, and I have a fascination with history and understanding different cultures. The AMNH contains a wide variety of exhibits in a diverse set of fields. Being natural history there are the usual exhibits on various types of animals, plants, forests, landscapes, etc. But there also is a section on human biology, various cultures from across the globe (not sure how this fits into "Natural" history), meteorites, gems, among others. And then there's the adjoining Rose Center for Earth and Space. So you definitely get a lot of stuff for the $13 "donation".
Being in a museum with this much stuff really makes one think and prioritize their interests. You can try to get more involved with something already familiar, or you can try to discover a whole new set of interests. I tend to choose the former, I'm not sure how much I can get interested in the details of african mammals or rocks, etc. Luckily I have a pretty good background in a variety of fields that are represented at the museum so I had a lot of stuff to examine. My museum highlights were the video presentation on DNA, all the things about cultures of peoples, especially those of Asia, the big bang and the spiral walk of time. Its especially interesting to see the presentation on the various scales of measurement in the universe, from the size of the universe (around 10^26m) to the smallest particles known (10^-12m). There's way too much that I can say about these exhibits, and for brevity I will not cover them here. But feel free to email if you want more details.
One more thing on exhibits -- the featured exhibit during this time was on Dinosaurs. It was quite an impressive exhibit, with the highlights being a few fully assembled dinosaur skeletons that were made of the actual bone/fossil (not a cast). Plus I saw quite a lot of school kids out there, and I always take joy in watching children learn and play. That exhibit reminded me of some classic Calvin and Hobbes cartoons of when Calvin goes to see the dinosaurs.
T-Rex Skeleton Exhibit
Kids at the Dinosaru Exhibit. The tour guide (on the right) is whistling to get the kids attention -- either that or she's about to hurl :)
posted by Monish at 6:35 PM
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