[Music] Hi I'm Miss Penny from KidVision and I'm here today at the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale to speak with Mr. Joseph Cox the museum director.

Miss Penny it is so exciting to have you here at the Museum of Discovery and Science thank you for being here.

We'd like to find out about you and your job and we'd also love to look around the museum.

Really excited to take you on a tour show you everything that we have at the museum and tell you what it's like to be a museum director and how I got here.

How did you get here?

I was always the little boy who loved museums, who loved science always asking all those questions why is the sky blue?

Why is grass green?

And so my parents were really good to me and took me to museums all the time and when I was in sixth grade we actually went on a week-long field trip to museums all across London.

Wow.

And so I fell in love with museums saw dodo birds for the first time and saw fossils and dinosaurs and decided that's what I wanted to do.

So when I went to university I studied environmental science and that included things like geology and biology and chemistry and all of those just came together and set me on a path to being a museum director.

What exactly does a museum director do?

You know I think one of the things that's so exciting about being a museum director is no two days are ever the same so one day you might be meeting with someone and talking about a new exhibit that you're developing.

Another day you might be spending time with summer camp children and seeing what their summer camp is like.

Another time you might be meeting with funding partners who helped create some of these amazing spaces that we have here at the museum so every day is a little bit different it's really exciting.

I love this room and I'd love to take a tour of your whole museum.

Could we do that?

Of course there's so much to see let's go explore!

Ok!

[Music] So Miss Penny here we are deep underwater in the Ecoscapes exhibit here at the museum and what we're looking at is the Florida coral reef.

It is beautiful and I see you have a lot of tanks with sharks and all kinds of animals that you would find in Florida.

We do we've got hundreds of animals who live here at the museum and a great team of staff in our Life Sciences Department who look after them.

These are mangroves which are one of my favorites because they are so important protecting us from hurricanes.

And then of course everyone loves our alligators.

So did you know Florida is the only place in the world where you can find alligators and crocodiles?

They're North American river otters and they would be found in the wild here in Florida particularly in places like the Everglades and rivers but the ones that we have here were rescues.

And so what a wonderful place to be rescued at right?

How old are these guys?

So they vary in age I think the oldest is six or seven.

They get along very well they do they do.

One, two.

Oh right with the lightning look at that we did it.

So we're in the storm center here at the museum.

We can learn all about weather and especially hurricanes because you know how important it is to prepare for hurricanes each and every year.

And it's nice that children know what to expect.

So we are in prehistoric Florida and this is an Imperial Mammoth.

Wow isn't this huge?

Giant.

It's bigger than an african elephant and speaking of big teeth amazing look at the saber-toothed cat.

Yeah.

So huge big teeth.

Big, big strong jaws.

Bigger than an African lion so thousands of years ago walking around Florida would have been just like going on an African safari.

[Music] Well we have had a wonderful tour of the museum there is so much here and so much variety for children to learn, things for them to do, things for them to explore.

And now we are here in our dinosaur boneyard surrounded by some pretty exciting animals.

Yes, tell us about them please.

So we have three different objects here from the museum's collection and the collection those are objects that we keep here at the museum so that we can share stories about animals and history and plants that lived in Florida or around the world.

Now right there in front of you this is a really exciting piece.

This is a brand new object in our collection and this is a baby dinosaur.

A baby?

Baby dinosaur.

So this is a Tarbosaurus which is a type of Tyrannosaurus that was actually found in Mongolia which is a country in Asia.

How did it get here?

So he was donated to the museum.

A paleontologist found him in Mongolia and they excavated the actual skull.

And it looks like he was a carnivore because he had some big sharp teeth here for a baby.

He did and those teeth got much bigger as he grew up and could have been almost the size of a banana when he was a grownup.

Wow.

He or she we don't know which.

And tell me about this guy.

What is that?

This is a Colombian Mammoth tooth.

So this is one of the molar teeth from a mammoth and a mammoth was a type of elephant.

What we look back in our history to see well what were some of the biggest animals in Florida these are two examples of prehistoric beasts that were ice age mammals and so this Columbia mammoth would have been walking around Florida at the same time as this.

And this do you think this is a plant eater or a meat eater?

Oh he's a meat eater.

He's got some major teeth there.

Great teeth.

Yes.

So this is a Smilodon.

He is smiling or what some people may know as a Saber-toothed cat.

So he would have roamed Florida around the same time as our mammoth.

And I noticed that you put gloves on are there special materials or garments like gloves and jackets that scientists particularly wear?

Of course so when we're handling fossils now this is a real tooth a real fossil and so it's very delicate so we have to make sure that we're looking after this and being very careful.

So we wear gloves to protect the fossil.

Makes a lot of sense.

Now we're in the Makers part of the museum and I would imagine this is where we get to make things.

It is and we call this the hangar because it looks like an aircraft hangar.

So we can make all kinds of different things here in the Makerspace.

I want to ask you I know that you are the museum director but I see a lot of people working here.

What type of jobs can people find here?

So there are all kinds of jobs in a museum you can be in just about any kind of career that you enjoy depending on what you love.

So we have staff who work in our Explore store so that's the museum's gift shop.

And we have people who look after our animals.

They could work not just in a science museum.

There's lots of different types of museums.

There are.

There's Art museums, History museums Natural History museums, Science museums all kinds of different museums even Aircraft museums.

Yes and I am very interested in paper airplanes so I know the first one isn't always the best you have to keep trying and trying again.

Well we've made some planes.

I made one that goes very fast.

Should we see?

Let's try it okay.

Are you ready?

Okay.

Well thank you very much.

we really learned a lot today.

Miss Penny thank you so much for coming here and playing with us today.

This was a lot of fun and happy to have you here anytime.

I will come back, I promise!

Perfect, thank you.

Thank you.

Hi boys and girls it's Miss Penny put on your thinking caps it's time to learn a new word.

Gloves.

Gloves are hand coverings worn for protection.

They have individual sections for each finger and the thumb.

What was that word?

Gloves.

Good job.

Museum director.

A museum director oversees everything related to the museum.

The exhibits, the collections the activities, and the people.

What was that word?

Museum director.

Good job.

Nature exhibit.

A nature exhibit is a display of a collection of items that appear together in nature.

What was that word?

Nature exhibit.

Good job.

Science museum.

A science museum is devoted to science exhibits and activities.

What was that word?

Science museum.

[Music] Good job.

See you next time!