At the Museum 



American Museum S Natural History 



www.amnh.org 



Anyone who's ever watched kids running through 

 sprinklers or splashing around with toys in a tub 

 knows the mesmerizing hold water has on children. 

 So when the American Museum of Natural History set 

 about designing the exhibition Water: H2O = Life, awareness 

 of this fascination helped transform compelling yet complex 

 science into a family affair. 



From hands-on water works to interactive computer sta- 

 tions to evocative walk-throughs, visitors young and old are 

 treated to a host of viscerally engaging experiences as they 

 explore a virtual "flood" of information about the essential 

 nature of water and the current and future water-related 

 challenges facing the world. 



"This eye-opening exhibition brings visitors closer to 

 water in more ways than they ever imagined possible and 

 hopefully leaves them with a deep sense of responsibility 

 towards conservation of this remarkable ingredient for life," 

 said Eleanor Sterling, Director of the Museum's Center for 

 Biodiversity and Conservation and curator of Water, which 

 opened this month. 



Setting an interactive tone from the start is a veil of mist 

 through which visitors pass at the entrance, a reminder of 

 the abundance of a substance that covers more than two- 

 thirds of the Earth's surface. Striking a paradoxical note, 

 the next display evokes potable water's rarity — less than 1 

 percent of the planet's water is readily available for human 



use — with water droplets falling from the ceiling to a table 

 so that people can run their hands beneath the drops. 

 And this is just the beginning. 



An interactive feature on the three states of water allows 

 visitors to touch water as a liquid, ice, or vapor, while a dis- 

 play nearby explains the water cycle, the series of stages by 

 which our finite water supply endlessly moves from under- 

 ground and bodies of water into the atmosphere and back 

 again. (Part of the inspiration for this exhibition was the 

 finding in a 2006 AMNH survey that 41 percent of U.S. 

 residents could not name a single component of the water 

 cycle, such as evaporation or rain.) 



Other hands-on exhibits permit visitors to block and re- 

 lease the flow of water, akin to building and removing a 

 dam, to study the respective effects on a river bed; pump 

 water from an artesian well to mark the decrease of water 

 pressure in another well drawing from the same under- 

 ground source; and lift a container filled with water to get a 

 sense of its weight and the literal burden that carrying water 

 still is for many populations around the globe. This last is 

 accompanied by a beautiful and telling display of water re- 

 ceptacles from ancient vessels to plastic cans used today. Of 

 related and special interest to children, a working tabletop 

 model of a PlayPump water system shows how children 

 playing on a merry-go-round are actually pumping water 

 from the ground into a tank, an ingenious method that has 



