Chemistry and Archaeology: the Midden Link

All the way back in January and February of this year the Museum was working with eight Year 8 students from Matthew Moss High School in order to create a Midden – so that we could research the decay and survival of a number of everyday objects. We called it our ‘Experiment in Archaeology’ and installed the midden in our Allotment with plans to excavate just before the opening of the new Ancient Worlds Galleries in late October.

Well, our Year 8’s were welcomed back to the Museum last week and were treated to a tour of the University of Manchester’s Chemistry labratory so that they could use the equipment to test a variety of materials. But first they had to identify the differences between organic and inorganic materials and determine which of these categories each of their samples placed in the midden belonged to. They used the Museum’s collection as a resource for discussion and to help them place their samples.

After examining some of the Museum’s collection they then went across to the meet Kristy Turner, RSC School Teacher Fellow at the School of Chemistry. Here is what she did with the students:

The students used FTIR spectroscopy to look at the materials in the objects they brought with them.  This method fires an infrared beam (a bit like that coming from your TV remote) onto the surface of the sample and measures how the beam changes when it is bounced off the sample and returned to the machine.  It can show us information about chemical bonds in materials, especially materials made from mainly carbon, like plastics.  The students will return in September or October to reanalyse the materials they have dug out from the midden and see if anything has changed.  This will let them see if being in the midden has made any changes to the chemical structure of the materials. 

Tracey Martin, who accompanied the students on their visit, sent us an email to say: “a BIG thank you! Our Year 8  boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves with you all yesterday“. Below are a few of the photographs of the boys working hard in Chemistry.

Last year’s midden

They also placed some more items in the midden, mostly organic materials, to see what effect a shorter time period might have on such samples. We can’t wait to welcome them back as Year 9’s in September or October to dig up their midden and retrieve what’s left (if anything) of their objects  in preparation for the Ancient Worlds Galleries opening!

Birchfields Primary school write a label for a very special museum object…

On Friday 6th July a wonderful group of very talented Year 5 pupils from Birchfields Primary School were invited to have a go at quite a challenging lable writing task. We asked the group ‘Can you choose one Egyptian Shabti from our wonderful and varied collection here at the Manchester Museum and write a 75 word label for it?’

The answer, quite unanimously, was yes they certainly could!

It was a very busy day, with lots of decision making and editing throughout their work; the group were very hard working! The class worked in small groups working their way through the selection process and then choosing the best descriptions from within their groups. Our curator of Egyptology, Campbell Price, was on hand to offer further insight into what the Shabtis were and explain a little bit about where this label will be displayed in the Museum.

We were all really impressed with the level of descriptive language used. The group produced really thought provoking descriptions that made us here at the Museum think differently about the objects too; they really were offering us fresh insights into these wonderful objects from ancient Egypt.

Why not come and see their label displayed in the new ‘Ancient Worlds‘ galleries opening in October this year!

Enrichment Day

On Friday 15th June The Manchester Museum became a hive of activity when Burnage Media Arts College brought 90 (yes, you read that right: Ninety!) of their Key Stage Three students to take part in our Enrichment Day activities.

It was an intense, yet immensely fun day. The students were split into six groups of fifteen students, each with a tutor to supervise, and they took part in four out of six Enrichment Day activities on offer throughout the day. These consisted of:

Minerals and Me!: Students were encouraged to explore the differences between rocks and minerals and challenged to identify which raw materials make up a variety of everday objects

 

 

Creative Thinking: Using our anthropology collection as inspiration students created their own masks to celebrate the Jubilee and Olymipics

 

The Money Game: Students put their skills to the test in this fast-paced competition in our Money Gallery. First team to complete as many challanges correctly had the honour of being named ‘champion’! 

 

Mystery Animals: Using the Living Worlds gallery students used their own investigative skills in order to identify a mystery animal in our collection.

 

 

Dinosaur Footprints: How long a stride does Stan, our T-Rex, have? Students answered this question, and more, by examining different dinosaur footprints and concluding if they were walking, trotting or running. They were also able to predict scenarios suggesting how the footprints were made all those millions of years ago.

Finding Frogs: With our fantastic live animal collection students were encouraged to find out more about frogs and their unique adaptations, in addition to discussing issues around habitat loss. Then, if they were lucky, they got to meet one of our residents!

Here at the Museum we really enjoyed it – it was great to see so many students taking part in various activites and engaging with so much of our collection all in one day. To close, I’ll let you read what two of the teachers concluded about the day:

Museum staff were amazing: really flexible and enthusiastic – could not do enough for us as staff and the boys. Thank you!

Educational: students taught about different ideas. Very enjoyable!

Ancient Worlds and Current Programmes

Most of my time this month has been spent on reviewing our Secondary workshops in order to make the most of our upcoming Ancient Worlds development and the fantastic opportunities for Key Stage Three and Four students to engage with the collection here.  Topics to explore include Archaeology, Empire and Identity with the chance to develop student’s interpretation and enquiry skills as well as utilising critical thinking whilst investigating objects as direct evidence of the past.

The new galleries are going to give visitors a great overview of Archaeology and the contributions that our diverse collection of objects can make to our understanding of the past, in addition to analysing the different techniques used to explore this past. We’ve also got a spotlight on ancient Egypt as an Empire with a focus on examining the daily lives of specific individuals such as pyramid builders and will even include Asru, our temple priestess. There will be a very different approach to interpreting Egypt presented in this gallery, with the museum exploring how the ancient Egyptians themselves viewed their country and also how Egypt is an African civilisation influenced by surrounding cultures. The final gallery, upstairs, will be possibly the most visually stunning and potentially the most likely to adapt over the coming years: visible storage areas will be created, current research will be presented and themes will be explored in addition to object biographies to make sense of various parts of  the collection.

To follow the progress, or find out more, check out the Ancient Worlds blog for more details.

Right now, having worked through some of the workshops and identified the potential links for the Secondary sessions, I’m really excited about the possibilities and opportunities the Ancient Worlds galleries will present for students and their teachers. The galleries will, in conjuction with the other permenant exhibitions here at the Museum, engage students with their curriculum subjects and hopefully provide them with a memorable experience to help them learn about the past, the present and even influence their own future.

Ancient Worlds development is moving along quickly!

Do you remember this object? It has been on display in our previous permenant Egyptian gallery for many years.This picture was taken by a Gifted and Talented pupil from Oswald Road Primary School right here in Manchester. What do you think it is?

I’m currently working on how the new primary taught sessions here can engage, excite and allow young people to explore the galleries and their fascinating objects to find out for themselves how past civilisations used to live.

It’s a very creative time, lots of ‘thinking BIG!’ and learning from what has worked, or not(!)  in the past to make it a truly interactive, explorative and stimulating learning experience for all.

Hope to see you in the new galleries in November!

Alan Turing and Life’s Enigma Exhibition

Our latest exhibition ‘Alan Turing and Life’s Enigma’ opened at the end of March.   The exhibition coincides with 2012 Turing Centenary Year, celebrating 100 years since Turings birth. Alan Turing is known to most people as a mathematician and pioneer of computing, as well as being a significant part in the solving of the Enigma code at Bletchley Park during WW2.  However the main focus of this exhibition is his work relating to biology, specifically to his fascination of how pattern, shape and form appear in nature, in a process known as morphogenesis.  In 1952, Turing published this work in a paper (The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis) describing a model showing how these patterns could develop from the interactions of two chemicals. The new exhibition combines material used by Turing during his research time in Manchester with objects from the Museum’s extensive natural science collection.  The exhibition is in our 3^rd floor exhibition space and runs until 18 November 2012.

As with all our exhibitions, we are developing a learning offer to allow students to explore further the ideas in the display.  Due to the high level content, we are planning a KS4 workshop and a series of Turing related A-Level Study Days, during the summer and autumn term.  Initial details of the workshops are below:

Maths/Science Turing workshop for KS4 – 2 hours, £75

This hands- on, interactive workshop will allow students to explore the scientific contribution of Alan Turings work.  Students will investigate how codes were used in early computing, the numerical patterns found in nature, and how it links to the Fibonacci sequence.  Though facilitated  learning on the new ‘Alan Turing and Life’s Enigma’ exhibition and getting up close to the museums collection, this session shows applications of maths to the natural world and cleverly links both science and maths curriculum.

Turing A-Level Study day, part of Engage with the Experts series (Full day) £150

Through a series of talks by University of Manchester Academics, hands – on activities and debates, your students will discover how their A-Level studies relates the last work of the famous scientist Alan Turing.  They will find out more about embryonic development, morphogenesis and pattern formation in living things and the Maths behind ‘Patterns in Nature’. 

We will be offering a few sessions free of charge during the trial phase (May/June/July), so if you are interested in this offer, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

You can get involved with your own Turing experiment, by growing a Turing Sunflower! 

Enriching Experiences

On Monday 26th March The Manchester Museum hosted a fun-tastic Enrichment day for Kearsley Academy students. These days are intended to challenge students, build on their skills and intoduce them to the fascinating  topics and possibilities that cultural instituions like The Manchester Museum can offer.

As part of their Enrichment Day experience Key Stage 3 and 4 students took part in a carousel of workshops that included:

• Minerals and Me – An interactive activity investigating our use of minerals in everyday life.
• Living Worlds Performance – In partnership with the University of Manchester. Interact with a Theatre Studies student as she presents a short piece on our relationship to nature.
• Money Game – A fast-paced game in which teams race against the clock to discover facts about currency.
• Creative Thinking –  Create masks for significant events like the Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee, using our Living Cultures Gallery as inspiration.

The day started at 10am and time sped by to the conclusion at 2.30pm. Students and teachers alike enjoyed the day, and we received some excellent feedback:

“It was a fun and educational day out with school!” – Student

“I enjoyed the visit. I learnt a lot of different information which I did not know and there were a lot of fascinating things to look at” – Student

“I like museums now and think they are interesting” – Student

“I now don’t think that history or modern facts are boring” – Student

“Throughout the Day the Educational package was great and the amount of time allocated each workshop was enough to keep the pupils on task” – Teacher

We’ll be offering more Enrichment Days throughout the Summer Term, so keep up to date with our offer through the website.

Planet Dinosaur

From 1^st to 9^th October, a herd of 6 spinosaurus’ took residence in our Living Worlds gallery as part of the BBC’s Planet Dinosaur tour.  To make the most of this opportunity, we developed an associated workshop for KS3 students which over 175 students took part in last week. 

The Curator of Earth Sciences, David Gelsthorpe and myself devised two additional workshops which complement the BBC’s ‘Build their own spinosaurus’ activity that utilised parts of our palaeontology collection.  In the workshop, students became paleontologists and investigated real fossils deciding out of 6 different specimens which one was a real dinosaur egg and which one was a real dinosaur bone.  In addition, students measured and analysed a trackway of dinosaur footprints to figure out what it told us about dinosaur behavior.  This workshop enabled students to get hands on with the fantastic objects from our collection and find out more about the research work that paleontologists do within the university. 

Since the spinosaurus are no longer with us, they have continued on their journey round the country up to Newcastle, we are going to continue to offer the Dinosaur Footprint and Paleontology skills making a 1 hour investigative dinosaur based workshop.  Please get in touch if you would like to book it.

New term excitement

Image, heads down - planning how to display things in the museum

Pens, paper and lesson plans at the ready: the new school year is upon us! And how quickly the summer seems to have whizzed by. We’ve been busy here at The Museum reviewing our entire learning programme and working on new ideas to revamp some of the old favourites whilst also racking our brains for brand new workshop topics and activties. In addition we’re also immensely excited about the upcoming opening of the new Unearthed: Ancient Egypt temporary exhibition, which is going to be a fantastic interactive space encouraging visitors to explore Egyptology and Archaeology with our very own Dr. Digby (Terry Deary): What more could you ask for?

Our new programming is now up on the website, and we will be updating this throughout September with lots more information and resources for teachers as we build up to the opening of Unearthed at the end of the month. In the meantime why not see if you can bring our collection into your classroom via the Museum of Mystery?

 

New Primary Learning Co-ordinator

Image, touching an Egyptian object from the Museum stores

Hello everyone, I’m Debbie Doran the Primary Learning Co-ordinator at the Museum. I just wanted to say Hello! and give you a taste of the wonderful things to come!

There will be a brand new Temporary Egypt Exhibition on the ground floor opening on September 30th. This will be an interactive, explorative and new insight into the wonderful past of Ancient Egypt and Archaeological skills. Come and explore the new exhibition with your family and friends soon!

Why not visit the Whitworth Art Gallery and Park soon for a family open day exploring archaeology and the history of the park too? Or visit the new Living Worlds gallery opened in April this year. There’s lots to do over the Summer so have a look at The Manchester Museum’s website for more details.  Enjoy!