Welcome back to
HMSC Connects! Families
, our electronic newsletter connecting families to museum resources for playing and learning at home. This week, we’re celebrating sharks! Hear the story of shark scientist Eugenie Clark, see if you can spot the ocean animals used in Kiribati armor, and experiment with buoyancy!
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Special Live Event!
Animal Snack Time: Marine-Tank Edition
Interested in what a spider crab eats? Want to see a sea star up close? Curious about what a horseshoe crab does with that long tail? Grab a snack and join human museum staff members Javier and Ryan on
Tuesday, August 4 at 2:00 pm
as they spend thirty minutes feeding, interacting with, and discussing these amazing animals. This event is free and will be hosted on the Zoom webinar platform. Visit our
web listing
for more information and to register.
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What We’re Doing This Week
By Ryan Wieboldt, Lead Visitor Services Representative
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This past week I went to the beach with my wife to enjoy some time on the ocean. As I grew up on the ocean and spent most of my time at the beach as a child, I can sometimes take it for granted and forget that many people didn’t grow up with this beautiful ecosystem in their backyards.
I was reminded of this as we were walking along the beach and I pointed out a shark, ray, or skate egg, which is commonly referred to as a “mermaid’s purse." My wife was shocked because she thought what we were looking at was seaweed, but I explained that the small black leathery pouch once held a baby shark, ray, or skate.
As we continued our beach stroll, she marveled at how many “mermaid purses” we saw in tide pools and on the beach. Just like the animals they are from, the egg cases come in many different sizes, shapes, and colors. We had a great time looking for as many types as we could find and made note of their different traits so we could learn more when we got home.
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Story Time
What is your favorite shark: a tiger shark or a white shark? Celeste Luna has created a special shark-inspired
coloring page and matching activity
so you can further explore fun facts about sharks, such as where they live, what they eat, and what kind of teeth they have.
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The blue waves in the
Republic of Kiribati's
flag shows the importance of the Pacific Ocean to its people. The country, made up of thirty-two atolls and one raised coral island, is home to about 110,000 people. It is also home to the second largest shark sanctuary in the world which is 1.3 million square miles! The Peabody Museum holds a suit of armor and weapons from Kiribati that were possibly used in the early 1900s for duels of honor. Two sea creatures were used to make these artifacts fearsome and deadly. Can you name the sea creatures in the fourth mannequin using the enlarge (+) feature in
this online exhibit
?
Reading the label in the online exhibit will give you the answers, so don’t read it until you have looked!
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Buoyancy is the ability of something to float in water. Bony fish have a special organ called a swim bladder that they use to control how buoyant they are. Unlike bony fish, sharks don’t have a swim bladder to help them control how much they sink or float in the water. Most sharks are negatively buoyant, which means they sink. They need to swim to move upward in the water. A few sharks are positively buoyant; they float and need to swim to move down. Some are neutrally buoyant; they don’t float or sink, instead they stay somewhere in the middle.
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Experiment with buoyancy and discover if you can create something that is neutrally buoyant!
Materials:
- Large container filled with water such as a large bucket, storage bin, kiddie pool, or bathtub.
- A variety of small materials such as corks, marbles, metal washers or nuts, drinking straws, aluminum foil, or beads.
- Clay
- String
Experiments to Try:
- Sink or Float? Drop each material into the water. What happens? Which materials sink? Which float?
- Make it Sink, Make it Float. Can you make the same piece of clay behave two different ways? First, try to form your clay into a shape that sinks. Then, try to form your clay into a shape that floats!
- Make a Flinker. A “flinker” is something that is neutrally buoyant; it doesn’t float or sink, it “flinks” somewhere in the middle. Use your small materials, clay, and string to build something that “flinks” for at least 10 seconds. If your first design doesn’t work, redesign and try again!
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Something Extra
Learn how sharks move through the water in this
HMSC Connects! Podcast
featuring Molly Gabler-Smith, a postdoctoral fellow with the George Lauder Lab at Harvard University.
Are you afraid of sharks? It may be the music!
Read
about how background music in shark videos affects how people view these amazing animals.
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Share the sign-up form with friends–no membership required!
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