The Museum has a long tradition of exploration, and fieldwork is a core component of the Museum’s research and collection development activities. The Museum sends out approximately 120 field expeditions each year and offers students in the Richard Gilder Graduate School the opportunity to participate in expeditions as part of their training.
Cell phones, hybrid cars, missile defense systems — and many other modern technologies — depend on components that include elements known collectively as rare earth metals. At the next SciCafe on Wednesday, May 4, Curator James Webster of the Museum’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences will be discussing these elements’ properties as well as the pressing issues of supply and sustainability. Dr. Webster recently answered a few questions about the topic.
What are rare earth metals?
It depends on who you ask. To many, the rare earth metals are 17 of the heavier known elements that exhibit similar but unique chemical, magnetic, optical, and electrical properties. They are silver to gray in color, relatively soft, chemically reactive, exhibit high melting temperatures, and are crucial to many modern technologies. But these metals have been mischaracterized and are incorrectly named. Most of the rare earth metals are simply not that rare: they are actually more abundant in the crust of our planet than metals like silver and lead.
What are some of the most common applications for these metals?
The rare earth metals are critical to modern and emerging products including lasers; components of electronic equipment; high-powered magnets capable of working at high temperatures, which are vital to “green” technologies like hybrid cars and wind turbines; rechargeable batteries; liquid crystal displays of cellular telephones, televisions, and computers; and catalysts required for converting or refining crude oil to gasoline and other hydrocarbon-based products. Read more »
From tweetups to touring the Museum using AMNH Explorer, TheNew York Times features the Museum’s digital efforts in a special section out today.
Writing about social media, Jennifer Preston focuses on two recent Museum tweetups that offered participants behind-the-scenes tours of the collections and looks at two exhibitions, Brain: The Inside Storyand The World’s Largest Dinosaurs, which opens April 16.
A separate article about smartphone apps praises AMNH Explorer for taking “full advantage of the latest technology” by using the Museum’s wi-fi network to pinpoint a user’s location. “The app’s distinguishing feature is both ingenious and pragmatic,” writes Sam Grobart. “In addition to exhibitions, the app can point visitors toward cafes, gift shops and—an especially valuable feature for those traveling with children—bathrooms.”
And in a story about how a small computer called an Arduino has revolutionized exhibition design, Nick Bilton points to interactive exhibits at the Museum, including one in Brain: The Inside Story that tests a person’s ability to draw a shape while looking only at a reflection.
Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History, represented the “informal science education” sector during an important congressional hearing last week in Washington, DC on science education in our nation’s schools.
Speaking before the House Committee on Science and Technology on Thursday, March 4, she testified that it’s essential that the federal government continue to support and fund museums and other science-related cultural institutions as “powerful catalysts” and key players in reforming K-12 science, technology, engineering, and math (or STEM) education.
Futter specifically mentioned several Museum programs, including its successful leadership role in the Urban Advantage Middle School Science Initiative in New York City, as national models for public-private partnerships that boost science literacy. To download the full text of the press release, click here and you can also read Ellen Futter’s full written testimony here.
Cell phones, hybrid cars, missile defense systems — and many other modern technologies — depend on components that include elements known collectively as rare earth metals. At the next 
Ellen V. Futter, President of the American Museum of Natural History, represented the “informal science education” sector during an important congressional hearing last week in Washington, DC on science education in our nation’s schools.
