[editor's note: Last weekend, NYC Skeptics and the Connecticut Drinking Skeptically Meetup organized a joint field trip to the American Museum of Natural History. NYC Skeptics member Mitch Lampert sends us the following report of the day's events. Photos of the trip are available here.]

A Day at the Museum
By Mitchell Lampert

A fun and instructive time was had by all, last weekend, at the the American Museum of Natural History. Over 30 folks took advantage of the all-inclusive, group-discount tickets, in this field trip organized by the New York City Skeptics.

The day started with a guided your of the Climate Change exhibit. But, honestly, I think we could have done without the tour guide. She was a little dull, and occasionally got her facts wrong (such as the origin of oil in the middle east, and the safety of nuclear power plants). However, the exhibits themselves were right on the mark when communicating the problems associated with climate change, and what we can do about them.

Unfortunately, we did not stay as a solid group for very long after that. When it came time for lunch, we sort of splintered into several sub-groups. But, at least everyone seemed to be with friends.

The show at the Hayden Planetarium was Cosmic Collusions, (which I had already seen roughly two years ago). It demonstrates how collisions of celestial objects could be both a destructive and a constructive force: from rocks hitting a planet, all the way up to whole galaxies "dancing" in each others arms. It's a very good show, even if the projected resolution of stars is not as sharp as most other planetarium shows I have seen.

The new Extreme Mammals exhibit was cool. Just when you thought you knew everything about our biological class, they manage to raise your eyebrows with fascinating tidbits about the wide variety of features found among them. Since this was "DIY" and not guided, we got a lot more out of it, in both education and in fun discussions.

The Butterfly Conservatory is always fun to visit. If you are lucky enough, one them might just land on you!

Dinosaurs Alive, now playing in their IMAX theater, was quite interesting. We have all seen dinosaurs "come alive" using computer animation, before. What makes this show special is how they meld the animations with actual fossils.

The trip, for some of us, ended with a perusal of the various gift shops the museum has to offer. As far as I could tell, every item sold in there promoted genuine science, in one way or another.

Taking a trip to the AMNH is definitely something I would recommend we do again, perhaps once a year or so. (Though, that depends on trip planning management.) Perhaps next time we'll decline the tour guides and also develop plans for some sort of group activity after the museum visit.