Increasing culture through technology

Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in the United States

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History was founded in 1910. It has a collection of items ranging from culture, history, art, and natural history. It also has collections from the 19th century. For a time it was occupied by the Office of War Risk Insurance while the Second World War was on.

By 1965, the Museum had been completed as soon as it was built. In the 80's there was no space for the collections, so some of them were placed in other spaces. Today, the Museum cares for around 126.5 million artifacts and specimens in both the Museum on the Mall and the Museum Support Center.

It has several rooms that keep different topics in the spaces available for the collections, among them are: Sant Ocean Hall, Mammals Hall, FossiLab, Human Origins, African Voices, Q?RIUS, an auditorium, a space to rest and charge electronic devices, gift shops, Partners In Evolution, Insect Zoo, Objects of Wonder, Bones, and Geology, Gems and Minerals. I visited all the rooms, but this last one was the one that interested me the most.

I learned about the history of geodes, gemstones, quartz, the name of when a crystal shows different colors in different places (it is called pleochroic) and how crystals grow (a process where atoms come together and start to form patterns). On the other hand, there were some difficulties such as that certain signs did not allow me to read them because the zoom of the exhibition was not enough to be able to read the words with the explanation.

Before this, I had not done something similar. It is something that I liked a lot, but I did have some difficulties. For example, there was a time when rooms stopped loading and I had to reload the page, or it prevented me from zooming some of the available images. Also, as I said before, it was somewhat difficult to see all the information by not allowing me to get very close and not having some clear images. However, as an experience to know general aspects of the rooms that this museum houses, it is something that I recommend to do.

I consider that these tools are a good opportunity to expand knowledge, in this case about science and culture. The situation with COVID-19 still persists. This has closed us the opportunity to continue with daily activities and to go out. However, there are alternatives to explore. An example is being able to visit places by virtual means. It is important to use this opportunity for things that benefit us in some way. We must not waste the use that we can give to ICTs and expand this use in other fields.

Here I provide a collage with screenshots that I took from my visit to the museum.

References:

https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/vt3/NMNH/z_tour-022.html

https://washington.org/find-dc-listings/national-museum-natural-history

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/about/brief-history-nmnh