The Franklin Institute Science Museum will design, test, fabricate, and circulate to eight museums an exhibit, "The Science of Music: Sound Waves and Sound Forms" that will introduce visitors to the physical laws that govern sound waves. By using music as an attractive and concrete subject to engage broad public interest, the exhibit will illustrate such topics as sound wave amplitude, phase, frequency, reflection and interference. Primary support for the project comes from the eight member Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative, consisting of: the Franklin Institute Science Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Discovery Place, Charlotte, NC; the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Fort Worth, TX; the California Museum of Science and Industry, Los Angeles, CA; the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN; the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL; the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), Columbus, OH; and the Museum of Science, Boston, MA. Each has contributed $50,000 and the costs of exhibit shipping and maintenance. Direct matching fund support totals more than $381,000. The exhibit will spend three months in each location, and the total audience will exceed 1.5-million visitors over its eight museum tour. This project will extend the work of a group of museums that are already helping each other in a collaborative effort. The exhibit concept has high public appeal among groups that science finds it hard to reach, including teenagers and minorities. An FY87 award of $145,000 is recommended.
Independent Production Fund is producing a three-part public television series focusing on the latest research in the science of music. The programs will explore how cutting-edge science is revealing new connections between music and the human mind and body, the natural world and the cosmos. The series will follow researchers from a variety of fields including physiology, neuroscience, psychology, biology, physics and education, as they use groundbreaking techniques and technologies to unravel age-old mysteries about music's persistence, universality and emotional power. It will show how these researchers are shedding valuable new light on the way brains work. The impact of the programs will be extended through a content-rich companion web site and innovative formal and informal educational-outreach materials to both middle and high school age students, as well as a complementary radio component. Mannes Productions will produce the series; Goodman Research Group will conduct formative evaluation and Rockman et al will conduct summative evaluation.
Universal BEATS developed by The Music Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina State University's Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education, and NCSU's Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology, and Science improved elementary education by developing instructional resources for 2nd-5th grade students that infuse cutting-edge content from the emerging field of biomusic into standards-based elementary science and music curricula. The approach used the musical sounds of nature to help students learn concepts in biology, physical science, and anthropology.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
patricia grayEric WiebeDavid TeachoutSarah Carrier
EINSTEIN is a series of three prime time television programs to be shown nationally on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The series will present a scientific biography of Albert Einstein. The series will treat the life of Albert Einstein on several levels. The central narative thread will trace the development and impact of Einstein's work in physics. The three programs will examine Einstein's impact beyond physics -- as a muse for the arts; a dissident voice in politics; a moral sensibility; ultimately as the greatest public symbol of scientific accomplishment. With original texts (including newly identified documents from the Einstein archives), historical footage, interviews, documentary sequences, the most sophisticated computer animation available, and other techniques as appropriate, EINSTEIN will present to its audience a unique picture of the role of Albert Einstein in the making of the modern world. Beyond its broadcast in 1992, the series also will receive wide educational distribution in secondary schools and colleges and a large foreign audience.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Paula ApsellThomas LevensonBarbara Flagg
The Children's Museum of Manhatten is requesting $267,220 over two years to create a 2,500 sq.ft. interactive exhibition about the physical and acoustic properties of sound. The exhibition will use music as a high-interest point of entry into learning about science, and also as a demonstration of science as part of our everyday lives. The entire exhibit will be displayed for two years. Certain elements will then be retired, others displayed indefinitely. Target audience is children in kindergarten through sixth grades.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
June Schneider
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
To focus attention on early education during National Science and Technology Week, ASTC will hold an event on Capitol Hill featuring the Hands-on exhibit "What Makes Music?" on the physics of music and sound. The ASTC Honor Roll Teachers, selected by science Museums across the country for their exemplary use of science museum resources to improve science education in their schools, will be honored. Thirty teachers are expected to attend and take part in a one day workshop on inquiry based, hands-on science activities and experiments.
The American Museum of the Moving Image (AMMI) will develop and distribute a traveling version of their permanent exhibit, Behind the Screen. The project, which consists of a 4,000 to 6,000 square foot traveling exhibit and related educational materials, will focus on the science and technology underlying movies and television, including motion, light and optics, sound, electricity and magnetism, chemistry, and geometry/trigonometry. The exhibit also will examine the impact of advances in the technology of movies and television and the resulting impact on audiences and society. The PI will be Rochelle Slovin, founding director of the AMMI. Carl Goodman, Curator of Digital Media, and Richard Koszarski, Head of Collections and Exhibitions, will serve as exhibit content specialists. The integration of science principles and activities into the exhibit will be under the direction of Ted Ansbacher, a physicist who previously served as Director of Exhibits at the New York Hall of Science. Thom Thacker, Director of Education at the AMMI, will be responsible for the development of educational outreach material.
The Independence Seaport Museum will create "Boat Building: Art and Science," a 3,000-square foot permanent exhibit that is designed to educate visitors about the science of boat building and design. Concepts such as buoyancy, water displacement, turbulence and drag will be explored through interactives, maritime artifacts, models and oral histories of tradesmen. By using the principles identified by the Family Science Learning Research Project of the Philadelphia/Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative (PISEC), the exhibit will be user-friendly for families with young children. Visitor workstation topics may include boat building, floating, buoyancy, sails, wind and boat shape. Visitors will use science processes while learning through open-ended play and exploration. Creative programs for families and school groups, as well as curriculum materials will support the exhibit. A website and technical training manual will also be produced. Four phases of evaluation are planned, and include front-end analysis which will incorporate focus groups with children ages 7-12, and formative evaluation using prototypes of interactives. Remedial evaluation will be carried out once the exhibit opens, and summative evaluation will use tracking and exit interviews to assess learning and understanding. The estimated annual audience of over 130,000 visitors will be expanded by replicating and traveling various components to other maritime museums in partnership with the Association of Science and Technology Centers. Evaluation of traveling components will also be undertaken to determine if they present an appropriate model for maritime-based exhibits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
David BeardRoberta Cooks
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Exploratorium requests support for four nationally recognized installation artists to develop scientifically relevant, interactive exhibits that will model the movements of waves, clouds, and flowing water and their interplay on and with the Earth's surface. By manipulating or enhancing the behavior of these simulated elemental forces, changing their scale or the perspective from which they are observed, or slowing down or speeding up their natural processes, the artists can bring out characteristics not easily observed, normally. Cross- referenced to other Exploratorium exhibits, these pieces will form the center of a subset of exhibits on the physics of fluid motion and the interaction of elemental forces. They will serve as a starting point for exploring the physical conditions that can cause and support the natural phenomena modeled by the artists. We will develop two different kinds of dissemination materials: 1) A publication for museum professionals, addressing the use of art in presenting science to the public. 2) Printed guides which will designate environmentally relevant exhibits at the Exploratorium dealing with aspects fluid movements in nature. These new "Pathways" will be intended for children and will be made available to students coming on Field Trips and the general public. They will be produced in coordination with two other Pathways on Energy and distributed in packets entitled "Energy and the Environment."
The World Biotech Tour (WBT) is a multi-year initiative that will bring biotechnology to life at select science centers and museums worldwide. The program, supported by the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and Biogen Foundation, is scheduled to run from 2015-2017, with the 2015 cohort in Belgium, Japan, and Portugal. The WBT will increase the impact and visibility of biotechnology among youth and the general public through hands-on and discussion-led learning opportunities. Applications are now open for the 2016 cohort! Learn more and submit an application at http://www.worldbiotechtour.org/become-a-stop
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Association of Science-Technology CentersCarlin Hsueh
The project, called Experimenting With Storytelling, involved working with four schools in East London and Northamptonshire, United Kingdom. Each after school session, with elementary school children and their parents, consisted of a cultural story or folktale (the ‘storytelling’ part) which had some science in it followed by an associated practical activity (the ‘experimenting’ part).
Choreographed by Liz Lerman and the Dance Exchange, The Matter of Origins is a contemporary dance exploring historical perspectives and cutting edge physics about our beginnings. In Act One, audience members watch as science concepts are translated into images, music, and dance. Dancers portray ideas such as the complexity of measurement, the ways atomic particles interact, and the origins of the universe. Science-themed, multi-media experiences including images from the Hubble space telescope, CERN, and replications of atomic bomb explosions accompany the dancing. In Act Two, audience members
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Liz LermanDiane DoberneckJohn SchweitzerPaula MillerJohn Borstel