Science and Global Change Excursion:
October 19, 2024 National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC:
For my CPSG excursion, I decided to take the CPSG guided trip to the National Museum of Natural History. There, I was able to learn about the history of the Earth, its impact on us today, and the potential impacts we will have on future history. The museum had a diverse array of exhibits ranging from the history of insects, to the history of cell phones.
The first exhibit I took a trip to was the “Cellphones: Unseen Connections” temporary exhibit. It provided interactive displays to engage a younger audience, but also had more in depth text which covered more complex topics, and also QR codes which linked to surveys. I believe that there was something for everyone in this exhibit, so anybody could visit and learn from this exhibit, making it an effective exhibit. One topic the exhibit went over was the impact of cell phones on the environment. For that, text accompanied with physical material used in cellphones was displayed which detailed the impact that the extraction of each material had socially and environmentally. One such material detailed was Lithium, which is extracted by mining deep into the ground and pumping out lithium brine. However, this process is done in places with already scarce drinking water sources, so these problems are magnified by lithium extraction efforts. Cellphones are also covered in a more general sense, by the museum. A display has a list of impact, social and environmental of phones as a whole.Two social impacts covered by this display was the mistreatment of workers as a negative, but the potential to revive languages as a positive. A technological impact covered by the display was that communication was now much faster.
The second exhibit I visited was the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. This exhibit covered the history of humans, their impact on the current environment, and the potential impacts on the future environment. Our evolution was one of the topics covered by the exhibit. Modern humans were actually one out of five species of early humans, which appeared in Africa 300,000 years ago. As we spread out the other early human species became extinct. Another topic covered was the explosive growth of the human population. By 2042, it is expected that Earth will be inhabited by nine billion people. The costs and benefits of our success as humans was also laid out on a display. All of the benefits solely benefited us humans, while at least half of the costs were damaging wildlife and the surrounding environment. One complaint I would have with this exhibit is that it doesn’t emphasize the negative impacts of humans on the environment. While climate change is highlighted as a real event, no negativity is attached to this looming threat. Rather it almost seems the exhibit takes a neutral approach to the issue.
The next exhibit that I visited was the Sant Ocean Hall. I specifically went to the part of the hall which covered climate change and its effect on our ocean. There, I watched two videos which were part of a display. I watched one video called “Satellites of the Sea”, which detailed the uses of underwater satellites to track weather patterns. Data was provided in a clean visual fashion to be understood by the average audience. Another video I watched was about how a group of scientists study the horseshoe crab population. They use a square net of specific width and length, and monitor the ratio of male to female horseshoe crabs. The explanation was very straightforward and could be understood by the average person. Last, but not least in the exhibit, was a video presented on a globe to help watchers better visualize data. This video depicted the history of Earth from an uninhabitable planet, to an environment capable of housing life. A big part of the video was of the role of phytoplankton and the crucial role it plays in our environment.
The last exhibit I visited had what I believe to be the best visual information out of all the other exhibits. This exhibit was the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils, which featured paleoenvironmental dioramas to depict the conditions of the environment in a given time period. One diorama I saw was of Nebraska 24-16 million years ago. The CO2 levels were even higher than today, so the sea level was much higher, and so were the temperatures. One other diorama I saw depicted Nebraska 66-50 million years ago which also showed that CO2 levels were at a higher level. Short summaries of the environment accompanied the dioramas which made the information provided more effective. In addition, there was a section dedicated to the history of climate change. I learned that extracting cores of ice from glaciers provided very reliable data that allowed us to track the climate up until now. We have climate information from as far back 625 million years ago recorded. The museum of Natural History did a great job at not just showing us the past, but proving its relevance to the present and future.