Event name: Smithsonian Excursion

Event time and place: National Museum of Natual Hiistory at 02 December

For the first part of the excursion I decided to go to the cellphones: unseen connection exhibit, which I was quite surprised existed. I first got distracted by the giant phones that would put emojis on your faces, but had to do work. This exhibit had multiple different ways it conveyed information. The main one used was the boards of text. I think it worked fine for conveying information, as it is the most efficient way for them to do so. It is definitely the best way to talk about how much phones have affected the world. The second one is models. Showing the materials used in phones in person definitely made it clear how complicated and how many different things were needed to create one phone. Showing us old phone technology such as transmitters shows how far we came to be able to hold phones in our pockets. The last, and most unusual way I have seen an exhibit give information, is comics. It was pretty clever, as comics of current day people can easily show how phones affect us today. Overall, I think all of these exhibits mostly succeeded on what they set out to do.

Cell Phones unfortunately contribute a lot to e waste, especially less than ⅕ of e waste gets recycled. Places with less environmental regulation might not safely process the e waste. A large majority of the emissions from phones is due to its creation, not its use. However, phones have brought much good to the world. It has made us more connected than ever before. Being able to check up on anyone you know whenever you want is incredibly useful. It has allowed people to organize and create protests that would otherwise be very difficult. Unfortunately, phones and the internet have greatly harmed people’s self esteem. Social media has made people more worried about their image than before.

I next went to the climate change exhibit to see “Humans change the World” to see how much our species changed everything since we came to be. One major change we caused was animal domestication. We greatly increased the population of many pigs, sheep, and cattle in order to eat. We have also caused some artificial selection in the process. The exhibit showed this information through boards. Another important change was agriculture. A good amount of the world is used for agriculture, and a small amount of species are used for our food, such as wheat, corn, or rice. The exhibit also used boards of text to explain this to all of us. Global warming, however is the most recent change we have caused the environment. The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere has caused many effects, all of which are harmful. The exhibit showed a graph of how much CO2 has increased in recent years so we could see how big the difference is. I think this exhibit does not downplay the negative effects we have on the environment, as it made it quite clear what harm we are causing due to climate change and told us the many problems that would happen if we continue.

Thirdly, I went to the Sant Ocean Hall, which was quite cool looking. I watched two videos at “The Changing Ocean”: Our Blue Planet and No sunlight no problem. Our Blue planet was not very interesting, but talk about how 70& of the planet is water and that it is very important to the environment. No sunlight no problem was more interesting to me as it talked about what life is like for creatures in the deep ocean. The data for both was not very complicated ,so I think a large majority of people could understand. The “Global Ocean Video” was quite cool. It touched on a large amount of topics for one video. It talked about global warming, and how the excess CO2 is making oceans more acidic. It mensions how tectonic plates change the arrangement of the Earth, and how Pangea once existed. It also discusses air and ocean currents. I found the globe format quite interesting as besides allowing people to watch from all angles, it was able to show things happening in one part of the world at a time. For example, you could see the ocean currents of different parts of the world at different times.

I finally went to the hall of fossils. I saw the various pylons that depicted the various environments throughout history, but there are two I am going to talk about here. The first one depicts Nebraska 16 to 24 million years ago in the Cenozoic era. Back then, the temperature, sea levels, and CO2 levels were higher than they were today. As such the area was filled with grasslands far and wide. The second pylon depicts Colorado 145 to 157 million years ago. The CO2 and temperature was much higher than the last pylon, yet the ocean levels were about the same. The pylon was quite barren due to volcanoes being common, but there were some trees and large dinosaurs. I think these exhibits worked well as they were both eye catching and informing. The climate change exhibits on the wall mostly talked about global heat, and how the past compared today. It talks about the last 500 million years of Earth’s environmental history. This information was found out using ancient soil, plant, and animal remains. The exhibits do not go into great detail about how these remains help give us that information, but tell us the basics. These exhibits worked fine in telling us this information, but could have been more interesting in my opinion.