Event name: National Museum of Natural History Field Trip
Event time and place: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC on December 2, 2023
In the National Museum of Natural History, we first visited the new temporary exhibit, Cellphones: Unseen Connections. which discussed the history and impact of cellphones. Many different presentation techniques were utilized to display information. There was a large comic strip on the wall which showed common uses and impact of cellphones socially. This was an engaging and kid-friendly way of showing some negative and positive effects of cellphones. There were many physical displays like elements from the periodic table and the before cell phones versus because of cellphones display. I thought these exhibits were impactful as they were more effective than simply listing the elements or products. There were also many interactive areas like the giant cellphones at the entrance. These were effective as an entrance to the exhibit to engage viewers from the start.
There are many environmental issues with cellphone technology. The exhibit showed a periodic table with real pieces of the element to show the many different materials that make up cell phones. Some of the materials used for cell phones like glass, cobalt, and palladium can be recycled. The majority of a cellphone's carbon footprint comes from extraction and manufacturing, 19 percent comes from use, and two percent from end of life. Each year, 2 billion cellphones are made creating 246 billion pounds of carbon emissions. Unfortunately cellphones are designed to be discarded, creating more waste and encouraging consumers to just buy new ones. Throwing out old technology leads to e-waste, instead reusing old phones or recycling materials from them is better for the environment. These stories were conveyed through statistics, like pie charts, graphs, and maps.
The exhibit also talks about the technological and social impacts of cellphones. A technological impact of cellphones is how many technological products are now obsolete due to cell phones. Cellphones can perform many functions like navigation, flashlights, music, camera, communication, and more. This has made products like cameras, GPS, and MP3 players less common than they used to be. This was displayed clearly through a display titled "Before Cellphones" which included items like newspapers, calculators, flashlights, walkie talkies, photo albums, and landline phones. One social impact of phones is the spread of misinformation. The exhibit featured a comic style example of misinformation like "Is your phone posture making you grow a literal horn?". The exhibit emphasized the importance of fact-checking news by doing a search for the original scientific paper and comparing it to the original news report to see if it has been misinterpreted. Another social impact is that cellphones are a catalyst for social justice. Social movements have been greatly affected by phones as they can connect people and quickly share events and information globally. However, cellphones can also be used by forces of oppression. The comic also depicts examples of events captured on cellphones and impacted by social media such as Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, and the Invasion of Ukraine.
The next focus was climate change in the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. Throughout the Anthropocene Event, agriculture, disease, and extinctions were impacted greatly by humans. The turning point in human history was 12,000 years ago when humans began farming and herding animals. This transformed Earth's landscape as humans began to build towns and cities and the human population increased rapidly. Agriculture created enough food to feed billions of people, provided us time to pursue other interests and create technologies to improve our lives. The exhibit features a timeline of human history, and includes the cultivation of many plants like figs, squash, rice, wheat, and potatoes as well as the domestication of animals including cows, sheep, chickens, and horses. Also, the timeline shows how the world population grew overtime, primarily influenced by agriculture. However, there are many costs to our success, especially regarding the extinctions and the spread of disease.
Extinction and disease were also heavily influenced by humans. Humans have drastically changed Earth's surface, with at least 83% directly affected by humans in 1995, causing a loss of wild habitats. This has led to the extinction of species that depend on these habitats, as by 2004 the "current bird, mammal, and amphibian extinction rates were at least 48 times greater than natural extinction rates-possibly 1,024 times higher". By providing these statistics the exhibit shows how humans have affected biodiversity. Additionally, the spread of diseases changed due to piles of waste from settlements becoming breeding grounds for contagious diseases, large concentrations of people, and global transportation. Along the timeline, smallpox, the bubonic plague, and influenza are noted. For example, from 540 to 542 the "bubonic plague killed up to 10,000 people a day in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East" and from 1345-1400 it killed at least a third of Europe's population.
This exhibit does understate the impacts of humans on the environment. While it briefly discusses changes to the landscape and extinctions caused by humans, it focuses primarily on topics that impacted humans like the domestication of certain animals and the spread of plagues. However, I think the entire hall emphasizes human origins rather than climate change and many other exhibits within the museum discuss climate change due to humans more effectively.
Within the Sant Ocean Hall, we explored climate change and human impact. We watched two videos about the changing ocean. The first video, Cause a sea change: save sharks, expressed the importance of protecting sharks. Shark attacks are extremely unlikely, with only 5 fatalities a year worldwide, and you are three times more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a shark. Overfishing has led to declining populations, but sharks are vital to the ecosystem as they keep prey populations in check and help maintain biodiversity. NOAA is controlling shark fishing to help save shark populations. We can help address this problem by choosing U.S. produced seafood and reporting shark sightings. The second video titled Deep ocean creatures, showed different creatures found in deep waters off Hawaii in places that no one has looked before. The video showed many species including henricia, slime star hymenaster, freyastera, and pythonaster. These videos had helpful images and graphics and did not use overly complex vocabulary, so they would be easily understood by a general visitor to the museum.
Also in the Sant Ocean Hall, we viewed a Global Ocean Video on a globe-shaped video screen. The sequence discussed how 71 percent of the world is ocean. The ocean contains many geographic features like trenches and mountain ranges, like the mid-ocean ridge system which is the longest mountain range in the world. Tectonic plates make up the crust and shift which leads to changes in geography. The continents used to form the single continent Pangaea with one ocean called Panthalassa. Additionally, the movement of these plates can lead to earthquakes and tsunamis. The spherical video enhanced the presentation as it showed the globe and changes over time like how the plates shifted to form Pangaea. This format helped to show geography across the globe.
The last hall we visited was the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils - Deep Time. We focused on climate change in this hall and we visited two paleoenvironmental dioramas. The first pylon was set 19 million years ago in grasslands in Harrison Formation, Nebraska. The carbon dioxide levels were 50% higher than today, the average temperature was 5-12 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today, and global sea levels were 330 feet higher than today. The second pylon was set 76 to 66 million years ago in Hell Creek Formation, Montana. The carbon dioxide levels were up to four times higher than today, the average temperature was 16-17 degrees Fahrenheit higher, and global sea levels were 650-740 feet higher. I think these pylons are very effective at showing the ecosystems and wildlife during a specific time period. While skeletons in the hall can show past animals, the pylons give context to how and where the animals lived.
In the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils - Deep Time, we also visited two climate change exhibits. The climate change exhibits within the hall showed information about past climates can inform us about current climate change. The first exhibit we visited, A Word With Ice, discussed ice ages throughout Earth's history. By tapping into bubbles found in ice cores, scientists could measure carbon dioxide levels inside the bubbles. Higher carbon dioxide levels mean higher temperatures, and ice ages occur when there are low enough carbon dioxide levels, land near a pole for ice to accumulate, and a cycle with reduced summer sunlight so snow accumulates year round. This data shows how information extracted from ice cores can be used to predict future climate changes based on carbon dioxide levels. Since there is now an increase in carbon dioxide levels because of human activity, there will be higher temperatures, higher sea levels, stronger storms and more rapid changes in climate. The next exhibit, Mammals of Maximum Size discussed how species got larger during the most recent ice age. The exhibit featured a mammoth skeleton composite and a bison skull. They used data from these skeletons to investigate the increase in size of species during the most recent ice age. This exhibit showed how animals are impacted by changes in climate.
