Helen FieldsScience Writer

I was in Southern California in October for a wedding – something that seems to happen every six months or so – and took advantage of a friend of a friend who works at the California Science Center to get a bit of a tour. The California Science Center is in the process of remaking itself. It used to be the California Museum of Science and Industry and now it has a shiny big building with lots of windows.

There’s a big emphasis on things you can try out yourself, like a nifty display case that shows the different ways that seeds or other bits of biological material can disperse to islands. (It used ping pong balls and levers and stuff. Really pretty fun.) Even before you go inside, in the parking lot, you get some real hands-on experience of a simple machine, by lifting this real live truck:

Obviously, as a reasonably-informed adult, and one who successfully completed the unit on simple machines in third grade, I know that you get more out of a lever the farther you are from the fulcrum, but boy, it takes on new meaning when you use it to lift a truck. (Note the actual space between the tires and the pavement.)

The museum has a lovely trio of space ships:

From left to right, a whole swath of space history: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules. That Mercury capsule is the very one that Ham the chimpanzee rode in on January 31, 1961. The Apollo capsule flew in 1975, which was after the moon landings were done; its main claim to fame is that it docked with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. All three are on loan from the National Air and Space Museum. I wonder how many of these things the Smithsonian owns, and where they all live.

The Science Center has a huuuge exhibit on ecosystems (which is kind of tucked away and easy to miss – a shame, because it’s like 75% of the museum). I particularly enjoyed a room about polar research. It’s kept extra-chilly and there’s a wall of ice where you can feel how well different insulating materials work:

They have a mitt made of fur, one stuffed with down, and so on, so you can see which one feels warmest. I can’t remember anymore, but I had fun poking the wall of ice. In the neighboring desert room I was amused to see a display on Katy Hinman, a former bat researcher who I was distantly acquainted with in college.

One of the most striking things in the museum was in the L.A. section of the Ecosystems exhibit. An artist took glass plates, put stencils on them, and left them outside on roofs in Los Angeles for one month. Here’s what happened.

And that, my friends, is just how much particulate pollution falls out of the air in Los Angeles. Makes you never want to breathe there again, doesn’t it?

For all my Museum Tourist posts, click here.

I was in the National Museum of Natural History on Sunday–love that place–and couldn’t resist new pictures of the elephant. I know, this isn’t my first blog post about that elephant, but he’s just so cool-looking. And I wanted to try out my new camera.

When I was a kid, the elephant stood on a round platform in the middle of the rotunda, but now it has this more natural-looking home. I just spent a few minutes trying to figure out when that renovation happened (vague guess: 15 years ago?) and was unsuccessful, but I did learn a bit more about the history of the museum. The museum opened a little over 100 years ago, and it had a lot of art then, mostly in what is now the Ocean Hall. Odd, huh, for a natural history museum? The art is over at the American Art Museum now, but here’s a nice post about how art inspired taxidermy.

For all my Museum Tourist posts, click here.

Bet you didn’t know this museum existed: The National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. It’s right across the street from the National Herb Garden and a short walk from the National Boxwood Collection and the National Grove of State Trees. They’re all part of the National Arboretum, one of Washington’s real hidden gems. It’s on New York Avenue, a road that wants to be a highway, lined mostly by motels and unattractive semi-industrial-looking sites. But behind its fence is this lovely, green refuge you would never imagine.

The museum started in 1976, when a bunch of Japanese bonsai growers donated trees to the U.S. as part of the Bicentennial celebrations. This was one of the original gifts, and it’s the oldest tree in the collection:

This Japanese white pine has been “in training,” the label says, since 1625. 1625! It was passed down through generations of the Yamaki family, who had a bonsai nursery in Hiroshima. Their nursery was less than two miles from where the atomic bomb went off, but the Yamaki family and their trees avoided major injury. Here’s a nice article about the tree from the National Bonsai Federation.

Normally I think that tree is displayed with a less distracting background, but in winter they collect all the bonsai and penjing (the Chinese version of bonsai) in one pavilion and put a temporary roof on it. Since everything outdoors was covered with a hard, thin crust of ice yesterday, this decision seems to make a lot of sense. These trees are from temperate environments, so they need shorter days and cooler temperatures for part of the year, but that doesn’t mean they need East Coast-style ice storms. “Greetings, venerable pine! We hope you don’t mind if we hang 16 pounds of ice on your perfectly shaped branches!”

Those branches don’t perfectly shape themselves. Here’s a European Hornbeam having its twigs molded:

This plant is a bit younger–an upstart, really, compared to the Yamaki pine. It’s only been in training since 1972. The bonsai collection has been supplemented over the years by donations from bonsai enthusiasts, including a gorgeous Japanese white pine given by King Hassan the 2nd of Morocco. I don’t know if he was a bonsai grower, but he apparently owned at least one.

It’s cool to see all these plants in winter. It also made me want to go back to see them when they bloom and leaf out in the spring. Just think of the years, decades, and centuries of loving care that go into making and maintaining these perfect indoor representations of outdoor life.

Bonsai appeal to my sense of cuteness. You expect to see little fairies dancing on the moss under the trees. We’ll have to settle for this guy, though.

For all my Museum Tourist posts, click here.

For ScienceNOW last week, I wrote a quick item about turkey surgery. Well, how to close up your stuffed turkey. If you, like me, thought, “Why would you need to close up a turkey?” I will explain. Apparently some people who know what they’re doing take the major bones out of the turkey before stuffing it. You end up with kind of a floppy turkey roll, so you have to sew it back together so it will hold its shape while it cooks.

The story is about a bunch of European veterinarians who wanted to figure out the best suture pattern for closing up a turkey. (Skin staples won. Ew.)

My story also ran on Wired Science.

My Christmas tree has achieved a small measure of fame, appearing in a blog post about dinosaur Christmas tree ornaments on the Smithsonian website. I’ve had a sequined stegosaurus ornament for years and years – that’s the one that made it on the blog – but I would like to also bring attention to this newer (but also sparkly) ornament:

Sparkly T. rex. Photo: Helen Fields

Woodchuck, sockeye, skunk. What do these words have in common? They’re all originally from Amerindian words. Oxford Dictionaries has a new blog post up about words with Native American origins, some of which I found pretty surprising.

If you’re missing my blogging these days, that’s because you’re reading the wrong blog. Between now and mid-December, I’m doing a ton of writing over on the Washington Revels Blog.

This is my busiest time of year, as I get ready to perform in The Christmas Revels the first two weekends of December. It’s an exciting show this year – we’re doing music from (and vaguely related to) medieval Andalusia, and oh boy, it is exciting. Interesting rhythms, haunting tunes, good stuff. Everyone should come see it.

As we get ready for the show, I’m blogging on the Revels website. That blog is mostly by me, but the music director has written a few posts and the artistic director may eventually write something, too. Follow along as we get ready for the big show!

There are lots of species of poison dart frogs and they come in lots of colors and patterns, even within the same species. Their colors are advertisements to predators: don’t eat me! you’ll be sorry!

For ScienceNOW last week, I wrote about an experiment that figured out a little bit of how poison dart frogs stay so diverse.

It seems like poison dart frogs shouldn’t be so diverse, because if you’re the frogs, it seems like it would make more sense to just give the predators one warning to learn. But that’s not how it works. Read all about it.

photo: Mathieu Chouteau

Yet again, I find reason to be happy that I am happy. Hm. That is an odd sentence. Anyway, a new study from the UK finds that happy people live longer. I wrote it up for ScienceNOW last week.

This doesn’t mean that unhappy people should feel bad about themselves. The authors aren’t saying you should go fix your personality. But it’s an interesting association, isn’t it?

Forget lessons. You can get better at putting just by using a famous person’s golf club. Ok, not even. A golf club that you are *told* belonged to a famous person. I wrote about it for ScienceNOW today.

Confidence is really important in sports, and people with more confidence do better. I mean, confidence isn’t going to make me better at basketball than Michael Jordan. But it’ll make me better at basketball than me without confidence. Crazy, huh? Brains are powerful.