Excursion to the National Museum of Natural history
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, October 20, 2024
At the National Museum of Natural History, I visited a number of exhibits. These exhibits covered a number of topics, ranging from cellphones to human history to the ocean to fossils and climate change. Through the museum, the 4 places I visited were Cellphones: Unseen Connections, the David H Koch hall of human origins, the Climate Change and Human Impact exhibit in the Sant Ocean Hall, and finally the David H Koch hall of fossils.
The first exhibit I visited was Cellphones: Unseen Connections. This exhibit presented information about different aspects of cell phones, their production, environmental and material costs, cultural and societal impacts, and more. They presented this information in a number of ways, some that I have not seen before in a museum. One way the exhibit presented information was through interactive elements. A couple examples of this were the very beginning where you could stand in a circle on the floor to get a screen to display information, or through games like the cell phone repair squad game. This is something that I have not seen before in a museum, but I think it is effective at conveying information in at least an alternative, and potentially better way, particularly for younger visitors who could quickly get bored simply reading information off of signs. That segways into a second way they conveyed information, which was through more traditional methods, like putting up signs around with pictures accompanying it. However even these sections were more lively, with real phones, materials to make phones with, and elemental metals shown, and conveying information through a comic book-styled wall telling a story rather than text with few images. Thus, I think that even the more ‘traditional’ parts of the exhibit were more effective than usual at conveying the information in an interesting manner. A third way the exhibit conveyed information was through a TV which showed videos of people discussing the cultural impacts of phones and cell service (or lack thereof) upon their or other communities. I think it was able to effectively convey the information, however it was placed in a far corner of the exhibit that could easily be overlooked. It may have proven more effective if it were closer to the center of the exhibit, though of course the creators of the museum do have to make choices about what should be prioritized and placed front and center in the exhibit, and it seems they made the choice to not center this.
In terms of the impacts of cell phones, on the environment and our society, the exhibit has much to say. It discusses how the metals needed to make cell phones are costly to obtain, and create lots of pollutants and waste in their procurement. One such example from the museum was copper, where the exhibit said that making just half a pound of copper creates 735 pounds of waste. It also discusses how we can help reduce the amount of waste and pollutants created by recycling old phones instead of leaving them around or throwing them away, and also by trying to use our phones for longer, and to try to repair our phones when possible rather than replacing them. Some societal impacts the exhibit discusses are that cell phones allow for much quicker communication, especially over long distances, and that it is easier than ever for people to take videos of events, to either save for themselves for the future, or to hold police or other public officials accountable for their actions. Also another more technologically oriented use of cell phones is that recently, MIT researchers were able to use cell phone accelerometers to find potential weak points in bridges, and that this method was far cheaper than the previous techniques. All of this was told through the myriad of ways I discussed above; anything from TV videos to regular exhibits to interactive games you could play.
Now, I will discuss the David H Koch hall of human origins. This exhibit, amongst other things, showed numerous ways that the Earth’s climate has impacted humans, and how humans have impacted the climate and the world. First, the exhibit says that the climate has shifted between times of extreme heat and extreme cold over the last few hundred thousand years, and that these shifts likely were a major contributing factor in the evolution of a number of traits of modern humans like walking upright and having larger brains, which the exhibit designers showed through a looping video put on display with text and graphics below showing these changes in humans and in the climate. A second topic the hall discusses is the development of farming about 12,000 years ago, and they said that this affected the earth because it caused humans to drastically increase in population and become a dominant species all around the globe. This information was shown through a timeline that showed when different plants got cultivated and animals were domesticated, some examples being the cultivation of figs and wheat, and the domestication of horses and sheep. The exhibit designers also included a chart which showed human population over time, which helped to highlight the impact of farming on the size of the human population. Thirdly, the hall shows some modern impacts of humans, discussing how humans have changed the world by creating dams, and stating that humans have impacted 83% of the world’s surface. One map in this area that was effective at conveying the information was one which showed human lights around the world, and how much of the world is covered with human activity.
Now I will move onto discussing my opinion of the hall’s discussion of climate change. My opinion is somewhat mixed, in that I think the hall was not designed to discuss climate change and that there isn’t necessarily an obligation for everyone to cover the subject, however in the places where it was more relevant they didn’t emphasize the negative impacts of climate change, and in some ways dismissed the topic, even if inadvertently. In 2 of the locations I discussed in the paragraph above this was apparent. First, when discussing how the changing climate in the past few centuries have affected humans, they discuss how the changes have been “extreme”, but do not mention climate change or its effects. The rhetoric of “extreme” when discussing past changes without also bringing up the destruction those extreme changes caused (which I don't believe the exhibit did) in a way de-emphasizes the impacts of climate change today. Additionally, when discussing the ways humans have impacted the climate in recent times, the exhibit fails to discuss climate change, and does little to mention how the recent global industrialization influences the world. Thus, I believe that the exhibit should do more to emphasize climate change, however as I said earlier, there is not an obligation for everything to mention the topic, this exhibit clearly was not intended to discuss climate change, and that any shortcomings on the topic were likely inadvertent.
Next, I visited the Climate Change and Human Impact exhibit in the Sant Ocean Hall. In this exhibit, there were some interactive video stations. The first video I watched was called “Our Blue Planet”, and it discussed the huge impact the ocean has on human life, in that it produces around 50% of the oxygen that we breathe, and has absorbed roughly 25% of the carbon dioxide we have emitted since the industrial revolution. This information was extremely understandable even to someone with no knowledge at all, and more information could actually have been helpful, though you do of course have to balance that with the duration of the videos, of which these were intended to be kept short. The second video I watched was called “No Sunlight? No problem!”. This video talked briefly about fish that live without sunlight, and the video mentioned some species of starfish and fish. The information was not that understandable as I believe it used some more technical terminology and didn’t explain much, but I think the purpose of the video was more to peak the viewer’s curiosity rather than to convey information.
At this exhibit, I also visited the global ocean video, where the screen was shaped like a globe. The video sequence covered a number of topics. The first video was called “An Ocean of Change”, and it discussed things at the bottom of the ocean, like tectonic plates and ocean topography, shifting land masses, and the effects on humans of tectonic plates like earthquakes and tsunamis. The second video was “Ocean Motion”, which discussed ocean currents, how the initially chaotic appearance actually gives rise to patterns in ocean water, and mentioned a few ocean currents like the Gulf Stream and the Circumpolar current. The third video was “Air Meets Ocean”, which discussed how the ocean helps keep a temperature balance on earth, temperature patterns on earth, and the El Niño / La Niña cycle. The fourth video was “Climate Change Changing Ocean”, which discussed that by burning fossil fuels, we are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which has enormous effects on the climate, including on the ocean. Some examples they gave were coral bleaching, more powerful hurricanes, and more extreme weather in general. However, it also gave a message of hope, stating that it is a fixable problem, and that we have fixed problems like it before (even if on a lesser scale), like how we dealt with the O-zone hole that was being created by things like refrigerants and other chemicals. I think that the choice to display information on the globe was an effective way of conveying the message, as it allowed for you to see how things acted on different sides of the world (like different ocean currents), and allowed for more people to watch the videos at once.
The last exhibit I visited was the David H Koch hall of fossils. This hall discussed how the climate has changed, how it used to be in the past, and how it is changing now. First discussing how it was in the past, the exhibit has numerous pylons which describe how the climate was in the past. The first pylon I visited was describing the climate 50-65 Million years ago. At this time, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was 4 times higher than today, the average temperature was 8.9-9.6 degrees Celsius higher than today, and sea levels were higher by 650-740 feet. As for a description of the world, it was much hotter and likely had way more rainforests, and the pylon said that Wyoming was likely a rainforest at the time. The second pylon I visited was describing the climate 230-201 Million years ago. This pylon said that CO2 was 7 times higher than today, that the temperature was probably 6.4-14.4 degrees Celsius higher, and that sea levels were probably 30 feet lower than today. The world at the time was likely lots of conifer forests, fern prairies, and floodplains, with rivers and lakes providing habitats for many forms of life. In terms of efficacy, I think these exhibits were effective because they conveyed the information in an easily understandable manner, and each had an accompanying model showing in 3D what a small piece of the environment would have looked like at the time.
The Fossil hall also had some areas describing earth’s past and present climate, and how it has changed, and how we found out about these changes. The first of these spots I visited was a video about ice records. This video said that we can drill into ice and determine how long ago a certain layer of ice was deposited by looking at differences in snow layers that indicate seasonal changes (or something along those lines), and from that we can take ice samples to determine temperature and carbon dioxide levels at the time. The records showed an extremely strong correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature, and also that we are emitting more carbon dioxide now than at any time in the 800,000 year long ice record. I also watched a video on the Billion Oyster Project, which focused on how people are trying to plant oysters around New York City because they were previously overfished, but it turns out that oysters can help filter out pollutants from the water and that they can reduce storm damage.
In conclusion, the visit was informative for me, both in terms of gaining information, especially about the impacts of cell phones on the climate, as I did not have a great deal of knowledge on this subject beforehand. Also, the exhibits helped me gain knowledge about how to present information in appealing, and often unique ways, particularly as seen in the cell phone exhibit as well as on the globe video in the Sant Ocean Hall. While it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that I will end up designing exhibits for museums in my future, this knowledge could still be useful in other areas that I may pursue in the future.