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MUSEUM CLASSROOM PROGRAMS
Bring your students to the Museum Classroom for a program that encourages critical thinking. Investigate essential science questions. Analyze historical policy decisions since World War II. All activities follow the requirements of the New Mexico Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts Standards.

Physics with Little Al ~ Energy with Little Al ~ Taste of Science
Our Radioactive World ~ Big Deal: The Small World of Nano
Secrets and Spies: The Manhattan Project ~ Decision to Drop

TOURS
Bring your students to the Museum for a docent-guided formal tour, or accompany your students for a self-guided tour. You can download the student workbook prior to the field trip. Students can also use the museum workbooks for enrichment activities on weekdays or weekends without being accompanied by a teacher. Self-guided tours can be booked with a docent for an additional fee.

Docent-Guided Tours: Military History ~ Nuclear Science
Self-Guided Tours (docent available upon request): Cold War ~ Nuclear Medicine ~ Power Up

DESCRIPTION OF MUSEUM CLASSROOM PROGRAMS

Physics with Little Al (Grades K-5) Your students will learn the basics of physics with Little Al Einstein. Hands-on experiments will encourage students to find science fun and exciting. Topics include energy, force, and matter.
Energy with Little Al (Grades 3-5) Your students will conduct experiments like Albert Einstein did with hands-on activities in Little Al’s Lab. Students will learn about wave energy, electric energy, mechanical energy, and radiant energy.
Taste of Science (Grades 3-5) Challenge your students’ minds through demonstrations of physical forces: electricity, the magic of magnets, and radiation in the world around them. This popular program includes hands-on activities that stimulate interest in the wonders of science. This program can also travel to local area schools, upon request.
Our Radioactive World (Grades 6-12; adult) Do we glow in the dark? What do superheroes have to do with radiation? Can you measure the half-life of licorice? By using a Geiger counter to test hot samples and by observing alpha, beta, and gamma rays in a cloud chamber, students will understand more about radiation and nuclear decay. They will also learn why nuclear medicine just might be one of the hottest career areas of the future.
Big Deal: The Small World of Nano (Grades 6-12) Discoveries concerning the special properties of tiny particles from 1 to 100 nanometers in size have scientists all over the world thinking big ideas by thinking small. Introduce your students to recent developments regarding nano-technology applications in electrical engineering, materials science, and chemistry. Students will work with ferrofluids, liquid crystals, hydrogen fuel cells, and models of nano-chemistry.
Secrets and Spies: The Manhattan Project (Grades 7-12) Secrecy, espionage, and science all proved critical in the race for the atomic bomb. Transport your students back to Los Alamos in the 1940s and the heart of the Manhattan Project. Let them experience for themselves the secrets and the spies who stole them. This program uses primary source material.
Decision to Drop (Grades 8-12) This program involves your students in a critical problem-solving exercise. Students will weigh the pros and cons of the decision to drop the bombs based on primary sources. Students will engage in role-playing activities designed around the original participants’ decision to drop.

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DESCRIPTION OF DOCENT-GUIDED TOURS

Military History (Grades 9-12, adults) Let our docents relay personal stories behind the exhibits at the museum. Investigate exhibits on military history including: • The Scientists And Discoveries of the Manhattan Project • Oakridge and Hanford Labs • The Rise and Fall Of Communism • The Cold War • The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis • The 1966 Palomares Mid-Air Collision View a large collection of model airplanes and actual military devices.

Nuclear Science (Grades 6-12, adults) Probe the mysteries of the atom and the emergence of Nuclear Science as you view these exhibits: • Power-Up (about nuclear reactors) • Radiation: What’s Hot, What’s Not • Nuclear Medicine • Chronology of Atomic History

DESCRIPTION OF SELF-GUIDED TOURS

Cold War (Grades 8-12) Working in teams, students will gather information from artifacts in the Museum. They will engage in strategic decision-making and explore options against the backdrop of the moral, political, and economic climate of the 20th century US/Soviet conflict.
Nuclear Medicine (Grades 8-12) The Nuclear Medicine exhibit moves the students through the early history of nuclear medical science use and demonstrates the difference between radiology (X-ray machines, CAT Scans, and MRI) and the related field of nuclear medicine (gamma scanners). When the student has completed the student workbook, he or she will know why more than a third of all hospital patients currently undergo some form of nuclear medicine treatment and how this has greatly advanced modern medicine.
Power Up (Grades 8-12)   The Power Up exhibit focuses on how nuclear reactors are used all over the world to meet the ever-increasing demand for electricity. With a greater concern about greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere, much of it by electric generation stations, the interest in greenhouse gas-free nuclear reactors has made this topic a major issue among decision makers.

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