Just a short walk from the Harvard Square T in Cambridge, MA is the Harvard Museum of Natural History with extremely interesting permanent exhibits. This museum is worth visiting for both adults and their children. I focused my visit this month on three exhibits.
The glass flowers, made by Rudolf and Leopold Blaschka, are intricate glass botanical structures. This was early 3-D modeling for science cataloging! Click on these images to take a closer look: these are all glass, even the needles, leaves and flowers on the stems. There are so many specimen that it was a little overwhelming, but if you are a botanist or glass enthusiast this will blow your mind.
The second exhibit of the day was Earth and Planetary Science – essentially a large room full of minerals — from the common to the extremely rare — including intact zircon crystals from 4.3 million years ago. Most are under glass, but there are several that you can touch.
The last exhibit I visited was the comparative zoology collection, including sea creatures in glass and a broad range of preserved actual creatures. Here are jars of preserved octopus and squid.
A few more pictures:
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