Live animals add an element of surprise to Museum displays. But they need more than a cute face or bright colors to earn a spot in an exhibition hall. Find out what it takes.

After a trip the immersive Hayden Planetarium, continue the lunar exploration with these interactive workshop activities that investigate the Moon’s habitability and sustainable resources.

Orbit the Earth and get an astronaut's view of a sunrise in space with this word-by-word script for the Field Trip to the Moon program at the Hayden Planetarium.

After viewing the Field Trip to the Moon dome show, continue your lunar journey by investigating its surface and formation around the Museum.

Can you imagine a world without butterflies? Although butterflies are insects, most people think they are beautiful, peaceful creatures and enjoy them as part of nature. They are also helpful as pollinators for plants and trees. But currently, seventeen species of butterflies are endangered, two are threatened and three are extinct.

Welcome to our plastic world. From cups to bags, bottles to CDs, clips to pipes, a nifty collection of polymers is here and thriving. Annually, the world utilizes 245 million tons of plastic, most of which is polypropylene (Andrady and Neal 2009). Plastic has many advantages: it is lightweight, has a high strength to weight ratio and is easy to mass produce (Andrady and Neal 2009, Thompson et al. 2009). But, unfortunately, it is also persistent, long-lasting and slow to degrade, especially in the marine environment.

Every year my family and I wage a constant war for homegrown fruits and vegetables. We weed-whack, fence, and cover our plants to keep them from rabbits and deer. However, the killers we cannot evade are insects. Which begs the question: Do we want organic produce or plentiful produce? This question inspired my science project theme: Can insecticides be created out of natural substances?

As a young child I spent many hours enjoying the cool refreshing water of Strawberry River. My favorite swimming hole was below an old abandoned bridge. A rope was tied to a tall oak tree, and I would use it to swing over the deepest spot and plunge into the river. Fish abounded in the waters, and everyone in the community picnicked in the shade by the sandy beach. It was the perfect spot to while away the summer. That is, until the Western Lawrence County Waste Water Treatment Facility (WLCWWTF) was constructed half a mile upstream.

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) play a vital role in U.S. agriculture as pollinators of several crops, including carrots, almonds and apples. Pollination is the result of honeybees' ability to remember foraging sites. This study investigated honeybee memory endurance using the relay landscape learning method. Honeybees (n=1,000, Day 0) were released 0.8 kilometers from the experimental hive in opposite directions, 500 for the relay and 500 for the control. On Days 1, 3, 6 and 9, 40 relay and 40 control honeybees were recaptured, repainted, and re-released 1.8 kilometers from the hive.

The objective of this research was to determine the effects of acidification, a change in water pH, on the grass shrimp Palaemonetes pugio. The null hypothesis is that when water temperature, salinity and pH change, the heart rate of the grass shrimp in beats per minute will not change. The dependent variable was heart rate as a measure of metabolic oxygen consumption. The independent variables were salinity, water temperature, pH and the length of each P. pugio.