So it turns out my favorite museum on the planet is probably even cooler behind the scenes than I imagined. At tonight’s Gizmodo/io9 Tech Tweetup at AMNH (Twitter: #AMNHTweetup), we were treated to a short tour and talk with the folks developing the technology behind some of their latest exhibit.

Among the fascinating revelations: AMNH custom-builds their own multitouch surfaces for exhibits because, as one staffer put it, the off-the-shelf stuff “gets destroyed by ten year-old boys in like five minutes.”

Awesome.

(American Museum of Natural History, Manhattan)