Event name: National Museum of Natural History

Start Time and place: 10:30 am, behind the elephant's butt


Visual display of elments inside a typicall cellphone

The first exhibit that I explored was the Cellphones: Unseen connection, which is a temporary exhibit, focusing on the origins, history, and impact of cellphones. By using a variety of presentation techniques to get their information across. I got a chance to really dive deep into three different presentation type. The first one is shown to the right of the page, which is a display case of real life elements that are found in the average phone, information about specific elements on the periodic table, and models of the most recognizable phone parts to people. This presentation effectively display a great visual for audience on what the technology we use everyday is made out of. The second presentation was of a comic on how new technology brings new anxieties in the world. Effectively explaining to the audience how humans have always been freaked out about new things through simple text and humor that children can understand as well. The last presentation was a visual timeline on how people used to communicate, entertain themself and capture memories called Before Phones. Effectively showing how communication/technology has changed and/or grown over the years through physical items on a timeline. Additionally, through the exhibit it presented environmental issues of cell phone technology. Knowing that the cellphones are created from earth's natural resources, 65 different elements to be exact, there has to be a proper way to dispose of this technology. The main methods to do so are dismantling, shredding and smelting, but can only be done correctly with industrial scale equipment and an approval of environmental regulation. Meaning the average person can not and/or does not know how to properly recycle their cell phone leading to environmental issues and future hazards for workers that do dispose of these technologies. When throwing away old cell phones in the trash it can end up in local landfill or travel for distances around the globe along with other e-waste, making wherever they end up more polluted. Worker tell their story as they express the danger of their jobs. One worker states that leaded glass and mercury is a big challenge in common materials that are hazardous, as this specific worker's job is keeping hazardous waste out of our landfills. Another worker understands the importance of his job, recycling things properly, which most of the world is not educated on, allowing him to help keep other families safe and improve our environment. Another big impact from cell phones is technology and social. Technology impact can be shown through mobile money allowing people to store, send and receive money using cell phones without connecting to a bank account, which improves the way people can spend their money. In the United States apps like Venmo, cash app and PayPal are examples but not strictly considered mobile money, due to the requirements of the user to connect their traditional bank accounts. Some social impact includes worldwide data centers, which are one of the largest consumers of energy and use 1-3% of the world power, increasing global internet traffic by 1200%. Also, miles of cables and millions of campuses handle the millions of calls made at any once everyday is another social impact. Overall, this exhibit was very enlightening explaining the positive, negative, and different impacts that cell phones have on people and the environment.

The second exhibit I visited was Climate Change In The David H. Koch Hall Of Human Origins more specifically the most recent part of human evolutionary history, entitled Humans Change the World. Like the first exhibit I was about to dive more into three different topics. The first topic is named What It Means to be Human. The designer used a timeline of human characteristics that are a part of the rich mosaics of physical traits and behaviors that make us human and how we have changed throughout the year. Some characteristics displayed are walking upright on short legs, making tools and eating meat, longer legs, rapid increase in brain size, communicatinging with symbols, longer childhood and adolescence, plant and animal domestication and more humans in cities than in rural areas, etc. Humans did not evoke all of these at once, but took about 6 million years for our human traits to accumulate. The second topic explored was called Humans Evolved in Response to a Changing World (Climate Change) displayed using tvs and graphs on carbon dioxide level and how climate has changed through the years. Climate has varied dramatically between warm vs. cool and wet vs. dry over the past 6 million years. These changes in the environment meant extinction of earlier species and their way of life. Earth CO2 levels have been affected by humans mostly through fossil fuel and cutting down forests, which increased the levels of CO2 rapidly and affected temperatures and sea levels. The last topic was called How are We Related to Other Living Things? displayed through bubble diagrams and family trees. Due to billions of years of evolution, humans share genes with all living organisms. Humans share more genes with organisms that are closely related to them. Through human genes you can understand how some animals have similar behaviors to us, but also see how things like banana trees are similar to use as well. Overall, the exhibit does not emphasize how humans have negatively affected the environment but more so how humans had involved emotions and how they used the environment to survive. Not so much how the environment is impacted so much by his actions.

The third exhibit visited was called Climate change and human impact in the sant ocean hall, where I was able to watch videos to learn more about ocean impacts. The first video was called No sunlight no problem, which talked about how chemosynthetic microbes are tiny single cell organisms that convert chemicals into energy to grow. As sea life decomposes it slowly builds up methane. Microbes become the architect of life building rock for larger organisms to live in while also feeding some of them. Methane seep and hydrothermal in vents, which is crucial for both marine and human life, gas micros actually consumes methane keeping this greenhouse gas locked in the sea floor and out of the atmosphere. Overall, the video is understandable for a general visitor because the video shows visuals and explains very clearly as to why the deep ocean is important. Additionally, I watched the Great Pacific garbage patch, which discussed the large areas of marine debris concentration that are formed by rotating ocean currents and gyres, which are big whirlpools that suck things in made up of tiny plastic pieces called microplastics ( less than 5 millimeters long). This is a big problem for us and the ocean, the size of the garbage patches are huge, constantly moving with ocean currents, and is as deep as the ocean surface to the seafloor. A lot of people wonder why we can't just scope up the large amount of debris, but there is too much marine life to scoop it up. Instead prevention like reduce reuse and recycle/clean up can help this problem. Overall, this video is very clear and also gives the watcher things they can do to help the ocean. Lastly I watched Global Ocean Video, which mainly focuses on different global impacts on the ocean and how it's a key to human survival. Some facts that were presented to the audience is that Earth was a ball of fire and covered in volcanoes before commits crashed into the earth surface releasing water and water vapor falling as rain creating the first ocean, which is now covering 71% of the earth's surface. The water in the ocean is continually moving and is all connected by currents. The heart of the ocean food is called Phytoplankton and to help reduce future global warming and ozone layer scientists can look at the earth's pass. Overall, the sphere-like shape video resembled the earth allowing watchers to see how the ocean can affect the earth and what the ocean can do and how important it is for us to take care of it. This is a very cool visual allowing better understanding of the information.

The final exhibit explored was called Climate change in the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils-Deep time. In this display pylons were scattered throughout the hall featuring miniature reconstructions of life and environment at different points in geologic time. One pylon was a will wood formation, showing wyoming 56 million-53 million years ago. Including the extinction of the big dinosaurs that trampled landscapes and ate large quantities of plants, dense fire sets flourished in warm, humid sentiments. Another pylon was Grassland far and wide Harrison formation, showing Nebraska 19 million years ago. Grassland furnished as the global climates cooled and grew more seasonal, lured by seas and grass, mammals adapted to living in wide open spaces. Both displays effectively allow the visitor to understand what life was during these years. Additionally, I viewed climate change in these exhibits. The first one talks about 2.6 millions years ago numerous species around the world got larger during the most recent ice age including mammoth and deer. Many factors favor larger body size, especially the cool climate. The colder it got during quitting , the bigger some animals evolved. This display used an image of the animal and information from a doctor to back up this evidence. This is effective by showing how animal size was bigger and how due to climate change these animals are not here or smaller now. Additionally, I viewed a presentation called Local evidence of global change. This exhibit explained that evidence of past ecosystems change can be found in lake-bottom sediments. Scientists drill a core of lake-bottom sediments and analyze the layers and their contents. They learn how old each layer is, how fast the layers accumulated, and whether the local climate changed. They then determine how these local changes are linked with global climate shifts. Overall, The human footprint today changes the ecosystem in global ways. Humans leave a huge footprint on earth from our population to our built environment, our large- scale architecture to our electronic lights, roads and waterways. The human effect on the natural system places many species at risk for extinction. This is shown by a map of influence humans have on the world and data how significantly alter the eating land is.