This past Thursday my history/museum friends and I checked out the special event Science by Night that took place at the Canadian Museum of Nature. This was a free event that included a variety of fun activities that encouraged visitors to get up close and personal with science and the science experts that normally spend their time behind the scenes at the museum.
Needless to say, it was a pretty darn cool night, and we scienced pretty hard. I tried to photograph everything that was happening, but there was actually just too much happening to really capture it all, so what follows is really just a small selection of a few of the things on offer that night, as well as a few of my favourite displays that I always enjoy when I visit this museum.
We learned how to survive the apocalypse with moss (specifically sphagnum) and other useful plants!Look at all the different types of sphagnum!A list of all the ways in which sphagnum can be used for survival.A view from above while some people are enjoying a game of Evolve or Go Extinct!This was a little display showing how taxidermy work was done for the displays in the Museum of Nature so that they could expose visitors to species in Canada that they otherwise would probably never have the opportunity to see in real life. I’m currently working on a Research Ramblings post that relates to this, so stay tuned for that…Probably one of the coolest parts of the night for me, we got to go BEHIND the displays and see what it actually looks like. The dioramas are much taller than you’d think! 18 feet tall to be precise! The expert explained to us that this was to provide depth to the exhibits, and allow for things like lighting to look natural and realistic.Trying to guess which animals these bones belong to! Much harder than we anticipated!Chris was very excited about science.If you’ve been to the Museum of Nature before you’ll know that this guy is a permanent feature, however polar bears are one of my favourite animals, so I couldn’t resist snapping a pic!All that science made us pretty thirsty, so we finished off the night with drinks at the Elgin Beer Project.
All in all, Science by Night was a lot of fun! If you like cool science things, and learning more about our world and history through science, then this is a great chance to get hands on and actually talk to the experts! It’s also great for all ages, so it’s very family appropriate, and free! If you find yourself in the area this time next year, I would definitely recommend checking it out! If you happened to attend this year’s event, what did you think? Was there one activity in particular that twirled your clock? Feel free to comment and share!
