THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Today, June 21, we went to the Museum of Natural History.  Everybody loved this museum.  We started out in the Gems and Minerals section where we saw huge gold nuggets from Nevada County and Placer County.

There were hundreds of big diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls and many other semi-precious stones, some set as jewelry and some unset.  We saw the famous Hope Diamond too.

GG's treasure hunt lead us to find a big lump of Cu and find out that this is the symbol on the Periodic Table for Copper.  We found meteorites from Allende, Mexico, and found out that Brazilanite is green.  We read about the Vesta and learned that it is one of the brightest and largest asteroids visible from Earth.   We searched the big globe and found that we live on the North American Plate.

From the Gems and Minerals area we went into the special Genome exhibit where we could follow a chart that maps some traits--dimples or no dimples, attached ear lobes or not, pointed hair line and can you curl your tongue.  Following the chart we found out that we are with 2% or 9% of the population, even though we all look very different.  

Then grandpa took us to the coolest display where our images were shown with images of dinosaurs.  In the mirror it looked like we were punching or patting the dinosaurs.and grandpa took some pictures of us.

We stopped for lunch in the park across the street and then we spun and spun and spun, making ourselves dizzy and disoriented.

After lunch we returned to the museum where we searched for the polar bear, and saw displays of all kinds of animals--rhinos, giraffes, and a model of the first mammal to walk on earth--a kind of mouse type thing.  The Hall of Human Origins displayed skulls of apes, hominids, humanoids, and homo sapiens through the centuries and explained how we evolved over millions of years.

There was a lot to see at this museum and we explored on our own for a while after agreeing to meet at 2:30 to go home.   We were getting tired of museum walking and went into the museum store and considered buying some stuffed animals, but changed our mind after awhile.  

It was time to go home and take a break, so we got in the car and drove back to the house, dropping GG off at the grocery store.  

While we were playing in the back yard we found a big turtle and tried to convince GG that we should be able to keep it , but she said no, we could just keep it through tomorrow and then we had to let it go.

We had pizza for dinner and then it was off to bed.  We are having a day off tomorrow, so we will sleep in and take a hike later in the day.