Tag Archives: geology

museum tourist: university of michigan museum of natural history

You know how I love a university natural history museum. It was Harvard‘s that started this whole Museum Tourist venture, and I’ve also reported on Yale and the University of Kansas, and oh gosh, someday I will get to the … Continue reading

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museum tourist: Grand Canyon visitor center

Last Monday I went for a day hike at the Grand Canyon and stopped by the visitor center on the South Rim. And I thought, hey, this is totally a museum! Sweet! Ok, it is quite a thin museum. There … Continue reading

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museum tourist: natural history museum, london

“The dinosaurs!” That’s what my boyfriend, who is British, told me I had to see at the Natural History Museum in London. So the museum and I sort of got off on the wrong foot when I discovered that the … Continue reading

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museum tourist: WV Geological Survey Museum

Look, it’s the West Virginia Geological Survey Museum: It’s in a rest stop on interstate 68 just over the border when you’re driving west from Maryland. Ok, I don’t actually think this is the museum. I think it’s an advertisement … Continue reading

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museum tourist: national museum, prague

Cases and cases of minerals. Stuffed animal skins. Grand staircases. This, my friends, is what a natural history museum should be. It’s on a hill at the end of Wenceslas Square in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and I was … Continue reading

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earthquake and tsunami

Here’s a set of links from Sarah Zielinski’s Surprising Science blog at Smithsonian.com on the science of the earthquake and tsunami. The place where I lived in Japan seems to have been unaffected by the earthquake and tsunami – it’s … Continue reading

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mysteries of the universe

New story! On meteorites! Read all about it! When I was working on my story about the origins of life, I kept coming across meteorites. Scientists study them to understand the early chemistry of the solar system, including the chemistry … Continue reading

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geology walk

On Saturday I went on a geology tour of D.C. – Callan Bentley, who teaches geology at Northern Virginia Community College, took a group of science writers around the bottom of the zoo, through a bit of Rock Creek Park, … Continue reading

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CHON CHON CHON CHON CHON CH CHON

A friend asked if I referenced the CHON movie in my story about the origins of life. I did not. Which is tragic, really – the CHON movie is an absolute classic of science cinema, and for more than a … Continue reading

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origins of life

A story I worked on for nearly a year is finally out in Smithsonian. It’s about the origins of life. We’re talking way, way, way back, billions of years, to the time when Earth was rock and water and a … Continue reading

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