Lava and Whales

One day we went to Bishop Museum. This is a picture of the original building that used to be all of the museum. Now there are other buildings and a planetarium! This original building included lots of cool stuff about Hawaii and the other islands of the pacific. We also learned more about King Kamehameha and his heirs and about the effort to preserve Hawaii's monarchy.

When your back is to the museum building you have this great view of Honolulu.

Then we went into this cool building and learned about lava. We walked through a dark tunnel painted and lit with blacklights. Look, I glow!  This tunnel was supposed to be like under the sea where volcanos start. We then listened to a speech about lava and the different kinds of flows.  There are two flows, known around the world as A'a and Pahoehoe. A'a is rough crumbly lava, whereas Pahoehoe is prettier flowing strandy lava. Check out this for more info.

There are also 2 types of volcanoes. Shield and composite. Shield volcanoes form from several eruptions over time of Pahoehoe flows creating an all over shield shape when viewed from the side. Composite volcanoes are more rocky and sharp and tend to have more explosive eruptions like this one below.  See the section on volcanic features for more info.

The whale exhibit was really cool. They had huge whale machines that you could make blow air and move their mouths. We learned about each whales cycles of breathing and eating. Some go down deep to eat and up to breath in a big circle. Some are more like a wave pattern where they breath up top and dip down just a little to eat.

This animal sculpture was supposedly what an early whale type animal would have been like. Pretty scary huh?!

I really don't know what this one is, but they had a plaque showing how it would have evolved into a whale. It basically formed some fin things and had like a walrus type stage then to a full whale, who knows what was around back then!

Check out these links for more info on Bishop Museum and whales!