A Tyrannosaurus rex has been my view for the last couple of months.
To me, that is rather cool! To a lot of people actually, that seems rather cool. When my friends heard I was undertaking a placement here at the National Museum of Scotland, they were really excited. I guess a museum as big as this one makes you think of words like “mysterious”, “fascinating” and “spectacular”. At least those were the words that came to my mind when I first entered!
And I must say, the National Museum of Scotland lives up to all those words. There are mysterious thousand-year-old objects. There are answers to fascinating questions like how Dolly the Sheep was cloned. And there are spectacular views, installations and exhibits just waiting for you to come visit.
But what have I done as a Masters student during my time here? My degree is all about engaging people of all ages and backgrounds with science. So I’ve developed a hands-on family activity and a resource known as a handling collection. Both are for the amazing new Science and Technology galleries that open this summer at the National Museum of Scotland. Since many of the objects in a museum are fragile, touching them is often a no-go. But with a handling collection, it’s just the opposite: touching is what it’s all about. You can feel the materials, feel the shapes. All in the name of science engagement.
I love when design and the natural sciences meet. I love how well-designed activities, installations and images can communicate complex scientific concepts. How it can engage and inspire visitors to see that science is for them, empower children to believe that they can become an engineer, a mathematician or a molecular biologist. And the National Museum of Scotland is definitely a place where design and natural science meet. They not only meet, they fuse into this fascinating and spectacular matter that you just have to see for yourself. So come join us, and see the Tyrannosaurus rex and Dolly the Sheep. That’s rather cool!