What is Q?rius?

Last week we went to the Museum of Natural History and I saw a room labeled Q?rius. Of course I couldn’t resist going in this room to find out what it was all about. It is only open to the public in the afternoons because the mornings are for school groups.

“Q?rius is a new way for teens and tweens – and their families and educators – to connect science with everyday experiences.”

We saw lots of hands on exploration activities which was awesome but the best thing I liked was their collection of things. There were 6000 objects in their collections and organized really well. When you found a category, you could open a drawer and the object was in a box for you to look at. If it was labeled with a green sticker, you could open it and touch it. If it had a red sticker, you couldn’t because it was too fragile. There was also a QR code that you could scan with your phone or their computer to get more information about the object. There were also microscopes to look closer at objects where the magnification is shown on a large monitor for others to see what you are looking at.

This was a fabulous place to visit and I highly recommend families with teens and older to see this. We could have spent hours there going through the collection.

If you aren’t close enough to visit, check out their website which is really great too. At the top of the page, it says “I am Q?rius about” and you type in the topic. Once it searches, it will bring up a lot of great information plus links to the objects in their collection.

I hope you have fun exploring this either in person or online because it is fascinating!