Museum of Science is one of the best places to visit in
Boston for the nerdy minds. It has got huge amount of information, models,
dioramas and lot more that can be explored in a single day's trip. This is one of the best places for
family outings on weekends (if majority of the family members are science freaks). Here is the
official link for the museum.
Few exhibits that I would recommend you to visit for sure are:
- A movie at the Mugar Omni theater (if you have already not
seen one). Guys it is a mind blowing experience to watch wildlife movie (or a
documentary) film on that screen.
- Theater of Electricity. Explore lightning and
storm safety as the world's largest air-insulated Van de Graaff generator hurls
indoor bolts.
- Hall of human life. You get to know lot of striking features
about human body. The museum has got lot of scientific
machines that we can feed in with information regarding our body and those
machines would analyze the information and return back results which help us
understand the health of our body.
- Live animal care center. Though this is not a very huge
place and does not have a huge bunch of animals (remember it is a care center) but the kind of animals that you find there are very interesting to see and study.
- New England habitats. This section contains life size models
of different animals that live (or once lived) in and around New England (Boston).
As I have being doing with my other Boston blogs following are few pictures of various
sections that I was able to visit. For each
exhibit there is a plate with descriptions that give more information about the
exhibit. I have tried to add those descriptions under each picture.
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| Desert Tortoise |
Description: Also called “gopher tortoises”. These tortoises
earned their nicknames from their habit of digging large underground borrows to
survive the extreme temperature of deserts. They can go a year or longer
without any access to water by storing urine in their bladder and reabsorbing
the liquid during dry seasons.
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| Amazon Milk Frog |
Description: Also called mission golden-eyed tree frogs, Amazon milk frogs are named for the poisonous white milky liquid they secret
when threatened. They are most active at night, and are known for their loud
night time vocalizations. Amazon milk frogs rarely leave in the tree canopy. By
using their loud snouts (the projecting nose and mouth) to push aside leaves and
branches they are able to squeeze into tight hiding places during day.
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| Madagascar Hissing Cockroach |
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| Madagascar Hissing Cockroach |
I was not able to find any description for the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches but can say that they are very creepy to watch and hence the description was not needed.
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| Bearded Dragon |
Description: The bearded dragon gets its name from the loose
skin with spiky scales under its chin. Males and females push these “beard”
forward when threatened. Bearded dragons are omnivorous (feeding on food of
both plant and animal origin); their stomachs accommodate large amounts of
food, helping them survive in areas where there food is scares.
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| Black Bears |
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| Black Bear |
Description: Black Bears are the only bears native to New
England (Boston). Adults weigh between 200 to 500 pounds (approx. 90 to 226
Kgs) and can live more than 25 years. They can be found from Northwestern
Connecticut to Canada. Not all Black Bears are black. The cinnamon-colored cub (second picture above) is also a Black Bear. Black Bears prefer plants over meat despite their long
claws and sharp teeth.
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| White-tailed Deer |
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| White-tailed Deer |
Description: White-tailed deer can be found throughout New England (Boston) wherever there are
woods and open pastures. In the wild, deer can weigh from 100 to 250 pounds
(approx. 45 to 113 Kgs) and live about 12 years. Deer are plant eaters. They
consume an amazing variety of buds, leaves, shoots and more.
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| American Moose |
Description: Moose are the largest land animals in North America. A bull
moose may stand seven feet high at the shoulders, weigh more than 1,500 pounds,
and live about 15 years. For most of the year, moose lead a solitary and
peaceful life. In spring, the male’s antlers begin to grow. By autumn, the
antlers are fully grown and the moose is ready for mating season. Come winter,
his antlers fall off. He will grow a new set next year.
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| Earth |
An interesting real life model of Earth has been created and kept for display. The model tries to reflect the mountain ranges that we have on Earth in a scaled down manner.
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| Ichthyosaur Fossil |
Description: It looks like a fish but this Ichthyosaur is a reptile.
Living in the time of dinosaurs, Ichthyosaurs became so well adapted to their
ocean habitat that they evolved a shape similar to sharks and other fish. Note
that there is no skeletal component of the top fin, only the outline of soft
tissue preserved with this fossil.
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| Game of Shadow |
The numbers are arranged in such a way that if the shadow
created out of them shows a child’s silhouette.
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| Ancient Foot Steps |
Description: These footsteps are from Tanzania, Africa and are supposed
to be 3.6 million years old. Individuals from a species of ancient humans
called Australopithecus afarensis walked over a layer of wet volcanic ash. Their
fossilized footprints show us that they walked on two legs, just like we do.
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| Nariokotome Boy |
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| Nariokotome Boy |
Description: This is a model of a fossilized skeleton of one of our
ancient human ancestors who lived about 1.6 million years ago. He is named
after the site near Nariokotome, Lake Turkana, Kenya, where he was discovered.
He could walk for miles. Scientists think that his tall body, long legs, and
narrow pelvis allowed him to efficiently travel many miles, hunting animals for
food, without burning many Calories. Based on his teeth his age is considered
to be 8-9 years at the time of his death. His height is 5 feet, 3 inches or
perhaps 6 feet if he had reached his adulthood and weight 106 pounds or 150
pounds if he had reached his adulthood.
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| Museum Floor |
Above is a quick glimpse into the one of the bustling floor of the museum.
Below are the clicks from a section called “Seeing Is Deceiving”. These are portraits that convey different images if you focus
on different parts of them.
At first glance you might see a solider on horse fighting
with a dragon or you might as well see a face…
This very simple looking vase revel two talking heads when
you look at the vast from certain angle.
There are quite a few other such images and objects as well
which one has to focus on to find different aspects hidden in them.
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| The Gaur Tablet |
Description: This reproduction of the earliest known map, a clay tablet
approximately 4,200 years old, records the size and location of a large plot of
land. It was probably made when the land was sold to a new owner. The original
map was discovered during a 1930-31 excavation by Harvard University at the
mound of Yorghan Tepe, site of the ancient town of Gasur near the modern city
of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. A cast was made of the original before it was
returned to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
And for the lovers of cars the museum also has got
miniatures of different cars with their descriptions. Following are the ones
that I like.
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| Roper Steam Carriage 1863 |
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| Rolls Royse Silver Ghost Car 1926 |
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| Wasp Major Plane Engine |
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| Wasp Major Plane Engine |
Description: The Wasp Major was the world’s most powerful piston airplane
engine – the last and largest before the introduction of turbines and jets.
This is a real Wasp Engine, but some of it has been cut away to reveal the
parts. At first look I was not able to find our the piston in-spite of it being
so huge.
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| Late Cretaceous – 67 million years ago, Hell Creek Formation |
Description: Formations are layers of rock that were deposited during
specific time periods. The Hell Creek Formation occurs in portions of Montana,
and in North and South Dakota. It is significant because it is a fossil-rich
layer from the Cretaceous Period, the end of the Mesozoic Era, about 65 million
years ago.
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| Triceratops Horridus |
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| Triceratops Horridus |
Few facts, Length of body 22 feet, length of head 6 feet, height 9
feet, skull weight 800 pounds, fossil weight 2000 pounds live weight 12,000
pounds and surprisingly diet is supposed to be plants – mostly palm-like
cycads.
Above clicks and the sections that I have covered are just a
small amount of exhibits that I was able to grab in form of pictures and put
here. As per my understanding it is very difficult to cover details of all the
sections. Apart from this there are few sections and exhibit for which we
cannot click any picture and hence we need to view the exhibit personally.
Whenever in Boston do plan a visit to this place.
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