Event name:Field Trip
Event time and place: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, December 2, 2023
The first exhibit that I saw when I visited the National Museum of Natural History was a temporary exhibit called Cellphones: Unseen Connections. In this exhibit, they focused on the origins, history, and impact of cell phones. I noticed that in order to get their point across they used a number of different presentation techniques that included comic strips, interactive devices, and even visual displays. Most of these displays highlighted the environmental issues with cell phone technology and the materials that are used to create these tools. It shows that there are 65 elements used from the periodic table to create cell phones which is almost half of the elements. These displays use infographics and flow charts to show that when you throw away an old cell phone it will most likely end up in a landfill to be smelted. But when you smelt these phones it releases toxic fumes and the only way to collect these fumes is to buy expensive equipment to filter the fumes. This exhibit also talks about the technological and social impacts of cell phones. One of the technological impacts is that cell phones speed up the signals of sending devices. And cell phones affect social life by spreading misinformation and creating a bias in technology.
The second exhibit that I visited was called Humans Change The World. In this exhibit, there were many different topics discussed starting with Communication with color which was represented by a timeline that showed how humans used to communicate with drawings in caves and how that developed into today's writing. The Next topic was the Change in Population, which was represented on a graph and showed how the world did not have a population of 1 billion people till the 1800s and now the population is well over 8 billion. The final topic that I explored was the change in agriculture which was displayed on a chart and showed how there have been many new crops invented but 20 plant species are still producing most of the world’s food. Most of the critics think that this exhibit de-emphasizes the human impact on the environment and climate and I would have to agree from what I saw there was not one display that specifically focused on either the environment or climate.
The Third exhibit that I visited was called The Changing Ocean. In this exhibit, I watched two interactive videos the first was called How Many Horseshoe Crabs and in this video, they talked about how they took surveys to see how many crabs there are in an area by measuring a 1 meter by 1 meter square between a full and new moon then they used that number to get an average for the area. The next video I watched was called Hurricane Hunters and in this video, they showed how hurricane hunters fly into the eye of the hurricane and drop devices into the storm the send data back to their monitors to show how big and powerful the hurricane will get. The next thing I did in this exhibit was watch the global ocean video. This video shows how the geography of the earth has changed over the years. The video started by showing that 4.6 billion years ago the earth was covered in volcanoes then something happened and It became the earth we know today. Then the video showed how the earth is constantly shifting due to the tectonic plates and the earth used to be made up of one continent called Pangea but now it has 7 continents. The oceans have currents that push cold and warm water around to change the weather. This spherical model that was used was very helpful in understanding what was going on with the word.
The final exhibit that I visited was called the Hall of Fossils. In this exhibit, the first thing I saw was some paleoenvironmental dioramas. The first one was called Life Before Big Herbivores 279-272 million years ago and it showed how before big herbivores were around ferns and seeded plants thrived, the temps were 8 degrees lower to 12 degrees higher and the CO2 levels were less than today to 3 times higher, and the sea level was 130-260 ft higher than today. The second diorama was called The Giant Shadow On The Landscape 150 million years ago. This diorama focused on how dinosaurs lived and died along rivers and open areas and in this time period the c02 levels were up to 4 times higher than they are today, the temps were 15-17 degrees higher, and the sea level was 330 ft higher than today. These dioramas were very helpful because it gave a visual representation of what the world looked like millions of years ago. The next thing I saw was the climate change exhibit. In this exhibit I saw global heatwave fossils which showed that 56 million years ago the CO2 levels were doubled and the temperature spiked 10-11 degrees, in just a few thousand years there will be a new global heatwave and there will be droughts, rising sea levels and temps will increase if something is not done about climate change. This exhibit is very clear in showing that fossils have changed over the years which tells us that there is a severe problem with climate change that affects our environment. It also shows that if nothing is done things will only get worse.