Come and experience the finest cinematic treats screened in super fresh 16mm format. This event will feature Science Fiction, Astronomy and Experimental Films, including the following titles, NASA Aeronautics and Space Report 106 (1973), Powers of Ten (1977), Algol the Demon Star, The Motions of Attracting Bodies in addition to many surprises screened in crowd pleasing 16mm film format.
Musical interventions provided by Kian & Gyr. Thrilling, amazing, and spellbinding!
Hosted by film Historian/Archivist Barron Sherer and Miami Science Museum’s Art & Collection Manager Kevin Arrow. This is the only movie night in town that screens films in vintage and obsolete Super 8 and 16mm format; you’re surely in for a unique experience.
Recently, the Junior League of Miami wanted to support a new project at the Museum targeted for young children. The idea of a bee hive was agreed upon, and as luck would have it, we later discovered a beehive in an avocado tree outside the Museum. The family-owned Bunch Farms volunteered to help with the Observation Bee Hive Project, which will allow visitors to see inside a bee hive (safely) to observe the life and times of a honey bee. Inese from Bunch Farms, who has been working on the project, comes from a long line of farmers. Her grandfather started beekeeping as a hobby in Latvia, and after moving to Miami, finishing school, and becoming a certified beekeeper, Inese is now following in his footsteps at Bunch Farms. After locating the queen bee in the Museum’s hive, Inese relocated the hive to Bunch Farms apiary to observe the colony, and by the second day in their new home, the bees were already organizing themselves and bringing pollen back to their hive. But they still needed a little encouragement, in the form of some honey and pollen from Bunch Farms, to stay and build their new home. To be ready for relocation to their permanent home at the Museum, Inese will need to split and “re-queen” the colonies, because each hive needs their own queen to keep a calm and friendly hive. Once the hive is installed at the Museum, children and adults alike will be able to literally see inside the amazing lives of bees.
In the video below, you can see a new queen bee communicating with bees in her hive, letting them know that she is present (and letting any other queen bees know that they need to leave).
It’s not something normally recounted in baby albums, but as you read this story, you may start to wonder … “Why not?” You always hear about baby’s first words, first steps, first laugh – but what about baby’s first museum? Recently the Museum received a lovely email from a family who brought their 3 month old son to our Museum, on a free-admission day sponsored by Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day Live. They were not sure how much he would even react to the trip. But as it turns out, baby loved the Museum just as much as mommy did when she came here as a child. This is the kind of story that makes our work at the Museum all the more worthwhile, and with the family’s permission, we are excited to share their email and a photo from their visit here:
Thank you to Smithsonian Magazine’s Museum Day Live for a very special, fun and memorable day! My husband, Jeff, and I took our three month old son, Colton, to his first museum! We went to the Miami Science Museum. We figured since it is a free day, we can stay just a few minutes or hours depending on the baby. Colton LOVED all the sights and sounds of the museum. He was so happy, alert and excited. We stayed for several hours and Colton was perfect the entire time with smiles, laughter and expressions of awe and amazement! I remembered vividly going to the same museum as a child with my family and on school trips…….and now here I am introducing my son to the magic of the museum and planetarium. We will always remember this day! – Tracy
It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Andrew, and this summer the Museum is honoring the anniversary of the storm with a brand new Hurricane exhibit. Tragic and heroic stories from Andrew’s survivors are told, and now, the Museum is expanding the exhibit to include realistic interactive experiences that allow visitors to study hurricanes and their effects in the same way that scientists do. In the “Wall of Wind” activity, you can use a touchscreen to choose building materials and design strategies for a building, and then turn on virtual hurricane winds to test the strength of your structure. It’s just like what real scientists and engineers do at the International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University. There, the real Wall of Wind consists of 12 fans, each 6 feet tall and with 700 horsepower, and can generate winds of up to 157 miles per hour – reaching category 5 hurricane strength. The goal is to see how buildings respond to “test hurricanes,” so that we can be as ready as possible for the real thing.
Future scientists test the strength of their building against a small-scale wall of wind
The real Wall of Wind at Florida International University
For lots of kids, the idea of a clubhouse is a special place that feels like it belongs only to you, and where you and your friends have the freedom to play whatever games you can imagine. At the Computer Clubhouse at the Museum of Science in Boston, young urban youth have a special place where they can work with mentors on their very own science, art, and technology projects, including video production, animation, webpage design, and scientific simulations. This flagship Boston Clubhouse, which began in 1993, has now been replicated across the US and in 21 countries worldwide. Miami Science Museum staff Ted Myers and Mickael Charles recently traveled to the Museum of Science in Boston to learn more about the Computer Clubhouse model, and, along with Clubhouse representatives from Columbia, Palestine, Israel, and throughout the US, receive training from Boston Clubhouse staff. Fun at the Clubhouse training included learning Android App Builder, Lego programs, and Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premier software, as well as a visit to MIT Media Laboratory to meet with the creators of Scratch, a user-friendly programming tool to create interactive games and animations. Another important part of the training revolved around running a Clubhouse, including the importance of youth mentors. It’s kind of like your friend’s big brother or sister who showed you the secret code to get into the clubhouse you had as a kid.
Participants at the Clubhouse training
The Lego workstation near the Clubhouse music studio
When the new Patricia and Philip Frost Museum of Science is completed downtown, external illumination of the planetarium sphere will make it a sight to be seen, day or night. Last week, Museum staff met with a team from Electrosonic, and braved lightning, thunder, and rain to test out the projection equipment that will illuminate the planetarium’s exterior after sunset. The team set up two 22,000 lumen projectors in the back of a van, and projected images onto an 8ft x 8ft panel painted to match the color of the future planetarium sphere. Have a look at some test images, and then just imagine what the view will be, driving by the Museum’s spherical planetarium after dark.
Students and facilitators of the Upward Bound Program, President and CEO of the Miami Science Museum Gillian Thomas, and Vice President of Education Dr. Judy Brown accept the AT&T ASPIRE Program Award check from AT&T Executive, JC Flores to support the Museum’s college readiness program. ASPIRE will serve 63 highly motivated, low-income, first-generation college-bound students from five of the lowest performing high schools in Miami-Dade County. Congrats to all!
Let ECHOS Year 2 begin! In the second week of September, just in time for back to school, ECHOS staff delivered 38 material kit sets to 38 classrooms at 21 Head Start childcare centers. Teachers of local Head Start centers across Miami Dade county are ready and prepared for a great year with materials needed for the first three ECHOS units: Rainy Weather, Feathered Friends, and Beginning Botanist. This year is sure to bring growth and learning in science to both teachers and children as another year of ECHOS implementation begins.
Hurricane Andrew will always be a part of the story of south Florida. For those who have only seen pictures or heard secondhand stories, it may be difficult to imagine the utter devastation, or the Herculean effort it took to recover from it. But for both of those reasons, it will always be a part of many Floridians own personal stories. The Museum’s new Hurricane Andrew exhibit tells the tale of the storm from the point of view of the people who survived it. But it has also inspired people to come forward to re-tell their own account – how it felt, how it sounded, and how it still stays with them. One visitor was compelled to come to the exhibit with her children, and to share a poem with us that she wrote 20 years ago, at age 19. She has allowed us to share it with you here:
ANDREW
A little wind, a little rain,
Every year it’s the same old thing
By Sunday we figured we’d play their game
So we boarded up our house, every neighbor did the same
Hurricane parties on every block
Friends and family, there they would flock
Later that evening this all had seemed dumb,
By that time we were wishing that Andrew would come
At three in the morning, every station had bad news
Just about that time, FPL blew a fuse
We went to a room and there we would stay
Everyone silent in hopes he would go away
He tapped on the glass and pounded on the door
We ignored him as we huddled on the floor
He came through the kitchen window first
Then out our front doors he had to burst
Another wind came back around
Leaving our roof on our neighbor’s ground
Before long, we sat in water six inches deep
We were tired and wet, but who thought of sleep?
At eight o’clock it was safe to venture out
We were all alive without a doubt
We walked the streets to see what Andrew left behind
Some really familiar houses were very hard to find
Some of our neighbors we’ve never met
If this had not happened we may have not yet
Small children and ladies with eyes full of tears
Devastation that will haunt us for many years
Troops are here to make things OK
But this is by far Miami’s worst day!
– Kerri W. G., 9/92
The thought of Space Camp conjures up images of simulated missions on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, bulky NASA flight suits, and trying to concentrate while strapped in the multi-axis astronaut training chair, which spins you in all directions at once. It had always been a childhood dream of mine to go to Space Camp, and I finally got to go as an adult. I had been giving a presentation at the Smithsonian Affiliations conference in Washington DC, and afterwards, I met the CEO of the US Space & Rocket Center, who invited me to lead a workshop for their staff about using virtual world technology to engage young people in science. So I decided I just HAD to stay on and go to Space Camp too. That first morning, I saw a group of about 50 adults who were as excited to be there as any kid could ever be. After meeting a real astronaut, Robert “Hoot” Gibson, and dividing into four crews named after the Shuttles, my Challenger crew was assigned to various jobs for our alpha mission. The first thing you learn is how much NASA loves acronyms: At Mission Control, there is CapCom, CATO (Communication and Tracking Officer), EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity), and so on.
Our camp habitat
A huge Space Shuttle
Me, doing an EVA
Having been assigned to an EVA, I was helped into a space suit (it’s a 2 person job), huge boots, a headset to communicate with Mission Control, and a full helmet with face guard. And the best part (and another example of NASA’s genius) – a vest outfitted with pockets all over it filled with ice packs. So despite the bulkiness, you stay cool under all the layers (not to mention the pressure of the mission). I was strapped into a contraption on the end of a robotic arm extending out from the open cargo bay doors of a Space Shuttle (in a place that looks strikingly similar to a real astronaut training facility at Johnson Space Center). Listening to my Mission Control crew through my headset, I followed instructions necessary to make repairs to a satellite. Something unexpected happens to you when you’re put in a space suit on the end of a robotic arm, or sitting at Mission Control in front of a monitor with tons of parameters on it giving instructions to Shuttle commanders… you automatically employ NASA-speak. Sentences like “Be advised that all systems are nominal” and “CATO, this is EVA, I have reached Instrument Panel B and disabled switch R1” start to feel totally natural.
At Mission Control
On a flight simulator
Launching our own rockets
Later on during camp, our crew successfully (for the most part) launched our homemade rockets, and of course had the chance to see if we could handle the multi-axis chair. But learning to pilot the flight simulators was another challenge. One slight move of the joystick, and you were in a tailspin. (A little hint: make sure the landing gear is down before you land). Something else happens at Space Camp – you develop a new appreciation for the sometimes super-human skill, dedication, concentration, knowledge, and practice it take to be an astronaut, pilot, mission specialist, or at Mission Control in charge of keeping everything on track. We did it all for fun, but these people do it when it counts the most and when the stakes could not possibly be any higher. It’s one of the great joys (and ironies) of Space Camp, that you are learning about pushing the boundaries of space travel, while at the same time going back in time, sleeping in bunk beds and eating cafeteria style – not to mention making great new friends. But this is where our next generation of heroes will be inspired to do the prep and take that leap. As a kid, I was always fascinated by the sky and what was out there, outside the blanket of the Earth’s atmosphere. Looking up into the sky, I wondered what was out there, and wanted to become an astronaut to find out – and that never changed as I became an adult. But it’s never too late to fulfill a childhood dream. I still do plan to get to space someday though… - Lindsay B.
