New Museum of Natural History exhibit takes you inside natural disasters

Thursday, November 13, 2014
New exhibit depicts nature's fury
Meteorologist Amy Freeze takes us inside the exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.

NEW YORK (WABC) -- You might never have experienced real-life natural disasters, but you can get up close and personal with them at a new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.



It is "Nature's Fury," and it takes you inside volcanoes, tornadoes and even hurricanes.



Forces of Nature shape our world, but how does a Richter scale record an earthquake? This exhibit is a chance to get hands on with powerful science.



"Learning the scientific phenomena helps us to prepare, to predict and to protect everyone is really the clear learning here," museum president Ellen Futter said. "Science is our friend in protecting our family and communities."



Footage from the EF-5 tornado in Greensburg, Kansas, lets you get inside a tornado, and 3-D models show global seismic movement being used to predict earthquakes. The exhibit also explains how earth movements can trigger tsunamis.



And using gas and goo, there's even a way to build your own volcanic eruption.



For the hurricane section, it's all about Superstorm Sandy, including a place for users to interact with a high-tech light exhibit that explains what happened to New York City.



"People tend to be afraid of natural disasters, understandably," Futter said. "But when you understand them, it really helps you begin to move in to strategies for living and for changing our city as appropriate."



Showing the science of Sandy and other disasters helps people can understand how to prepare for future weather events.



"You need to know the risks before you have a rational basis for taking mitigating action," Nature's Fury curator Edmond Mathez said. "So I hope that believe begin to understand that they should begin to think about the risk of natural disasters."



Nature's Fury debuts Saturday.



Watch the portion of the exhibit dealing with Superstorm Sandy:


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