Freya Bolton and Emily Stearn, students at Bedford Girls’ School, tell us about their experience of visiting the Museum to meet with the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity team and Dr Anne Jungblut who leads the Microverse project.
On 30 April, we (eleven International Baccalaureate students from Bedford Girls’ School) had the opportunity to come and visit the Natural History Museum, having participated in the Museum’s exciting project ‘The Microverse’. For many of us, despite the fact we’d visited many times previously, we knew this time it was going to be something slightly different, being able to explore the Museum in a new, unique and fascinating light. Having spoken to Jade Cawthray, she kindly agreed to arrange a behind the scenes tour especially for us!
We were greeted by Lucy Robinson, who explained to us, as we travelled through the Museum, that within there were over 80 million different plant, animal, fossil and mineral specimens. After this, we were introduced to Dr Florin Feneru at the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity, who confessed that he would receive specimens sent in from thousands of people each year, from the UK and abroad, in the hope that he could identify what exactly they were.
He explained that the most common specimen query was the “meteorite” (or as he would like to call them “meteo-wrongs”) from members of the public who wanted validation for the rocks they believed to have mysteriously entered from outer space. Dr Feneru did however then excitedly show us, an ACTUAL meteorite received earlier this year, letting us hold it. It was extremely heavy for its size – not surprisingly as it was composed of mainly iron.
He then led us into the Cocoon: an eight storey building with 3 metre thick walls, containing just over 22 million specimens. The building was kept at a particular humidity and temperature in order to keep the specimens in good condition.
The storey we entered was maintained at 14°C – 16°C and kept at 45 percent relative humidity. We were shown by Dr Feneru a range of butterfly species on the ground floor, and he explained that, before the Cocoon was built, the curators had to use mothballs to prevent infestations with pest insects.
After we’d visited the Cocoon, we were shown to a workshop area, where we met Dr Anne Jungblut, one of the founders of the project we have been participating in. She gave us a brief talk about her other current projects, including an expedition to Antarctica, and we had the opportunity to ask her about The Microverse and what inspired her to create this project. We were informed that one hundred and fifty four schools had taken part, and that Dr Jungblut was looking for a difference in diversity of microscopic life in different urban environments.
Following this talk, we had two hours remaining to ourselves, before it was time to depart back to sunny Bedford. Instinctively, we headed first to the cafes and shops before exploring the more scientific parts of the Museum. Full stomachs and emptier purses in hand we chose to explore the Marine Biology and Dinosaur galleries (naturally).
One of the pupils explained that she hadn’t been to the Dinosaur exhibition since she was 5 years old, as a consequence of being absolutely terrified of the animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex (she had many nightmares apparently). She confirmed that he definitely was not as scary as she thought he was at the time – that being said, she is now 17.
Returning back to Bedford with new knowledge of both ‘The Microverse’ project, marine biology, and dinosaurs, as a whole group we would like to thank the Museum staff members and the teachers at Bedford Girls’ School who made this amazing experience possible.
Freya Bolton and Emily Stearn
Thank you to Freya and Emily for writing their blog post and to Bedford Girls’ School for coming to visit. It was an absolute pleasure to have them with us!