Science teachers planning a trip for their students will find the Maryland Science Center, located at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, a great educational venue.
Many groups start their visit at Dinosaur Mysteries, where students and teachers step into the world of prehistoric predators and plant eaters. More than a dozen full size dinosaurs roam a landscape filled with dig pits, a field lab, excavation sites, and other areas of discovery. During a visit students meet T. Rex and Astrodon and see full size skeletons and casts of fossilized remains.
There are also live animal exhibits, such as amphibians and lizards, to help students see the connection between past and present. After seeing this exhibit, some students may even agree with scientists who think birds and dinosaurs are genetically linked.
Another popular display at the science center, Follow the Blue Crab, is focused on the Chesapeake Bay and its relationship to Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic. The exhibit has live diamondback terrapins, crabs, fish, seahorses, and native plants in aquatic display tanks. Visitors can ‘Walk the Bay’ by way of huge full color satellite imagery that takes up a major part of the floor space. By walking across the map, students are able to observe the ratio of water to land, concentrations of population centers, and learn why the health of the Chesapeake Bay is so important for that region.
The Blue Crab display also contains a huge mechanical crab, an icon of the science center. The completely refurbished giant, with waving claws and moving legs, is a student favorite.
A visit to Fossil Quest, gives students a chance to see meat eating dinosaurs, raptors, and crocodiles that once inhabited this region of the country. There is also evidence that giant Sequoia trees once grew in the area, albeit millions of years ago.
This exhibit includes armor from a 70 million year old crocodile; the teeth from a 100 million year old Mosasaur, prehistoric shells of oysters—as well as cones believed to have dropped from a giant redwood tree.
Newton's Alley, one of the science center's most popular exhibits, provides students with a chance to play a string less harp, or touch a cloud. They "see sound" and can stretch a soap film, all by people power. This highly interactive area reveals the phenomena of matter, energy, force and motion, all through some of the best demonstrations of Isaac Newton’s principles.
The Our Place in Space exhibit, also home to Science On a Sphere, uses computers and video projectors to display animated data onto the outside of a sphere. The entire exhibit is an animated globe that shows dynamic images of the atmosphere, oceans, allowing students to imagine gazing upon Earth while suspended in orbit above its surface.
This exhibit also includes data collected from Moon missions and Mars explorations that have been translated into a mix of live presentations and computer simulations.
Your Body: The Inside Story allows students to explore a day in the life of the human body, with an emphasis on the sounds, smells, sights, and sensations of everyday life. For example, they can experience the sensation of walking through the waking chamber after "sleeping" on a real bed of nails, watch an ordinary bike ride to school morph into thermal imagery of muscle activity, or stand inside the heart and lungs and feel the rhythmic beats and breaths.
Bodylink, one of three "Link" galleries, exposes students to a high tech environment accompanied by high touch experiences. They can test their nutrition I.Q., monitor their pulse and heart rate as they pedal a stationary bike, or surf the Web, watching video clips of the latest news from the world of healthcare and health science.
This part media center, part discovery room, part newsroom is equipped with Internet-ready computers, media players, satellite television and surround-sound audio systems. Computer and video sources displayed on huge screens offer visitors a unique immersive experience.
SpaceLink is a place where students can "dock" the Space Shuttle or construct a planetary rover. They can also watch NASA's latest launch countdowns and press conferences or try on a flight suit.
SpaceLink is also home to the Hubble Space Telescope National Visitor Center, where students can keep up with the latest discoveries from this orbiting observatory.
TerraLink let’s students fly over images of local cities as well as ones around the world and navigate from low-Earth-orbit to the top of their house using real data. They can even observe and disrupt a forming tornado with their hand.
All in all, the Maryland Science Center is a great place for teachers to bring their students as part of an exciting educational travel experience.