How Exhibits

So. What makes a science museum exhibit tick? (This is my first task: figure that out.)

Counterintuitive as it may seem, people learn more when an exhibit is interesting. A glass case with labeled rocks--we currently have a room of these, lots of these, so many rocks, oh god, oh god--won't teach anyone much of anything, unless they really like rocks and would learn if you just handed the things to them. Or, imagine why plenty of people find an art museum boring: it's just a bunch of paintings and objects labeled "don't touch" or "stay a foot and a half away from the art". You don't do anything with them. You don't interact with them. You see them, you might read the sign, you might linger in front of a few you really like, but you move on and forget most of the exhibit. Artists will get something out of the experience, and art historians, but I distinctly remember being pretty bored after a while when I was little.

Bueller.

Interactive exhibits that support the modern standards of learning are more interesting and informative. (I've been reading a lot of jargon.) Have you ever been to a science museum where you were meant to learn about tornadoes by looking at this misty cyclone that you could climb on? Or the Sue Rex traveling exhibit, where kids learn about palaeontology by uncovering dinosaur bones in a "dinosaur dig", where they chip away at a sandy plaster mix with a hammer and chisel to get to some encased full-sized raptor bone casts. I've been to both--some 12 or 13 years ago--and can picture them as clear as day. Or at the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center, visitors can climb inside a scale Apollo capsule mockup with two of their friends to flip switches and learn how cramped the darn thing was, which is a better way of learning than just seeing the Apollo 16 at the end of the hall.

Museums do not strictly speaking need to have a great deal of organization--you don't need the hall of man to be a separate entity from the collection on big-horned sheep--for visitors to still get the same stuff out of them, but it's useful to keep the staff sane and optimise a small space. (Like the two decently sized rooms I'll be working with). Organising around themes--Space Junk, Space Rocks, rock-rocks, and fossils--helps in that regard.

Copycatting layouts from successful museums is also a useful thing to do, although it's pretty obvious why copycatting from a museum within easy driving distance is probably not a great choice. (There's a rock museum a day trip away we should distinguish ourselves from, for instance.) It saves time, but isn't terribly helpful in the case of PARI. The nearest museum with a similar collection is either in Washington, DC (some of the collection is on permanent loan from the Smithsonian) or Huntsville, Alabama. Both the Air & Space Museum and Space & Rocket Center have something we don't have: Space for Space.

We do not have room for an Apollo capsule. Forget the whole rocket.

A museum display should provide the following for a visitor:

1. Its purpose. (To explain what the Space Shuttle tiles were and how they worked)
2. The cool science-y stuff. (A space shuttle tile is so effective, you can hold one in your hand and feel perfectly cool, even when somebody has a blow torch to the other side...which is red hot!) 
3. Some way for the viewer to interact with the exhibit (...to be determined.) 
4. Some method for the viewer to freely experiment with the presented display and information.

It can also be helpful to use different methods of forcing knowledge down people's throats. An artist can present images no photographer could ever manage, which may be useful to understanding a particularly odd concept. There is, after all, a picture-to-kiloword conversion factor. 

An earth-like moon around a saturn-like planet, two suns and an additional moon also visible

Art also gets people thinking about something differently, which can add to retention. Anything that gets people thinking about something differently, or again, or from a new and surprising angle, re-records the information in their minds and increases the likelihood of later recall. This is why taking your notes from a lecture, reading your notes over, highlighting important concepts, comparing them to the chapter, using them in your homework, and then reviewing them later means you're more likely to remember something! The same principles as in education apply--there's a lot of overlap between museology and science education. 

Which is nice, since I won't be able to fit the classes in for a normal education certification and if I want to teach after this whole undergraduate debacle, I'll need to do lateral entry. The background will certainly come in handy.