Like most senior projects, I've gathered, my first day
was also a little dull, really just getting my feet wet. After arriving at the
Cleveland Natural History Museum at 10:00, I spent the morning shepherding a
couple of school groups (mostly first graders) around the observatory and
planetarium, essentially shadowing Mr. Davis (my mentor) and Mr. Simpson
(another member of the CMNH Astronomy department) as they went about the
program. The program was really simple: starting in the observatory, we explained
how the telescope and dome work, and used the telescope to look at the sun on a
white board. From there, we went over stuff like the Earth rotating, what you
can see from an observatory, and a demonstration using a piece of paper of why
you should never look directly at the sun through a telescope. Finally, we
moved to the planetarium, where Mr. Davis gave a half-hour tour of the night
sky, highlighting major constellations and stars (i.e. the Big Dipper, Polaris,
Leo, Orion, etc.) Although all this was, in all honesty, slightly boring,
sitting in on the presentations did help me get a handle on what exactly goes
into a planetarium presentation, preparing me for my final presentation.
To end the day, Destiny (my fellow volunteer, from
Euclid High School) and I did some busy work, helping to clean thirty years of
dust off of a gigantic topographical globe, to be donated to the Kent State
geography department. Again, all though this was slightly boring, it was still
fun to be able to help around at the museum – being a museum, it has a lot of
really interesting stuff crammed into odd places. Overall, it was a good start
to my project.
Congratulations on getting through the first day! Seeing how you settle into your new routine and surroundings will be interesting (especially if you get the chance to explore some of that stuff in odd places!).
ReplyDeleteYour day sounds fun to me! Is the final presentation being able to give your own tour? Also are you focusing on the planetarium or all of the museum? When you talked about dusting off the globe I couldn't help but think of Night at the Museum. I bet you'll get to work with some really cool stuff!
ReplyDeleteI'm really just focusing on the planetarium and astronomy departments. As for my final presentation, I don't think I'll be able to actually present it, as the planetarium programs are planned out for the next few months; instead, it'll just go into the rotation for later this year or early next year.
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