Educator How-To: Identifying moon phases

The moon’s appearance in the sky follows a 29.5-day cycle. During the cycle, it first appears as a crescent. The lighted portion that you can in the night sky see becomes larger as days pass, growing until you see a full moon. As more days pass, the lighted portion gets smaller again, until no moon […]

Camper for a day: How I learned to love robots and make model magic

“Today we will: build a robotic hand; build a roving chassis for your robotic prototype; program your partner; study gearations; learn robotic parts; visit the Wiess Energy Hall and build a model magic robot.” So began my day as a Roving Robot Xplorations camper, when I was greeted by this extensive, exciting to-do list. All […]

Inspired by energy: Get poetic and win a tour of the Wiess Energy Hall

In the time before TV or radio, people had to entertain themselves. Some of the quickest games to start were word games.  Either take a theme and pun away, or set up different rules like starting the next word with the letter that ended the previous word.  For more formal entertainment, you could create a […]

Bakker blogs: Why Dimetrodons had interclavicles — and Uma Thurman doesn’t

HUZZAH! We have the missing bone: the largest unit in the Dimetrodon skeleton, the one bony element we never hoped to find! We thought weʼd have to sculpt a fake one, but now we have the real thing — the INTERCLAVICLE. Whatʼs that you say? Never heard of an interclavicle? Its common name is the […]

Treat yo self: New designers are beckoning in the Museum Store jewelry cases

We’re happy to report that our first Museum Store Trunk Show — featuring the works of revered local designer Rebecca Lankford — was a smashing success. If you missed it, fear not, ’cause we’ve got more in the pipeline. But you don’t have to wait until a Friday for great Museum Store finds; check out […]

Doing better: We heard you out, now we’ll fill you in

Recently, we were featured in a Houston Press article, “10 Things the Houston Museum of Natural Science Could Do Better.” While we welcome both positive and negative feedback from our guests — from pithy tweets to local press — we now realize that we’ve been a bit remiss in filling you in on our master […]


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