The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is developing an innovative exhibit and teaching laboratory called INTERACTIONS. The unique feature of INTERACTIONS is the combination of an exploratory, interactive natural science exhibit with an adjacent live-insect-rearing laboratory. The exhibits will give the visitors some of the exploratory tools and experiences of the scientist and involve them in the process of scientific discovery. The laboratory will provide visitors with direct experience with scientists and involve them in the scientific process. Ecological in scope, INTERACTIONS will communicate environmental issues. The museum's plant and insect halls, designed over thirty years ago, will be renovated totally. In their place, a single, large exhibit and teaching laboratory will be created focusing on the interactions of insects and plants. The exhibits, videos, computer stations, and adjacent insect rearing laboratory will invite visitors to participate, question and examine. This combination of exhibits, hands-on activities, video, and laboratory will increase the retention of information, stimulate interests in natural science, and give vitality to the museum experience. The total cost of renovation, modernizing, exhibit construction and installation is $1,340,000 with $1,000,000 raised by a vigorous capital campaign. This request is for the balance of $340,000 to complete the exhibit construction.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Dennis PowerCatherine WoolseyNorman IkedaJohn Torkington
The North Carolina Museum of Life and Science requests $491,260 to develop exhibits which explore mechanics of living organism. Basic physics, optics and fluids dynamics will be presented in the context of biological systems. Life in a Physical World interactive exhibits and educational materials which will reach over 3 million people. Life in a Physical World meets the needs of teachers, students and other science learners. The exhibits and educational materials integrate science concepts across disciplines. They provide hands-on, motivating science experiences in a non-threatening environment. Life in a Physical World makes physical science concepts accessible by presenting them in the context of living things. Project Outcomes The Project will produce a 2,000 square foot permanent and travelling Life in a Physical World exhibits. The North Carolina Museum of Life and Science will install the permanent exhibition. To ensure broad dissemination, the Association of Science-Technology Centers will circulate the travelling exhibition nationally and the Museum will distribute as-built drawings to science centers, natural history museums and zoos. Museum Educators will produce materials to enhance the instructional value of the exhibition.
The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, PA requests NSF support for a 5000 sf traveling exhibit on The Human Brain that is being developed for the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative (SMEC). This exhibit offers an integrated understanding of how physiological structures in the brain relate to vital life functions and human behaviors. Senior members of the exhibit development team include distinguished neuroscientists who are locally available and committed to The Franklin Institute project; the team is also advised by a large panel of nationally recognized experts in brain research. Like all SMEC exhibits, The Brain will be seen by over two million Americans during a 32-month tour to eight major cities across the United States. During the 1990's -- "The Decade of the Brain" -- the proposed exhibit project is important and timely in its ability to inform the public about new ideas and discoveries in the many sciences of brain research.
Interactive science exhibits will be designed, developed, and installed in the Brookings Interpretive Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The Brookings Interpretive Center is a new educational facility attached to the Climatron, a geodesic dome greenhouse. The exhibits will be installed in one of five theme areas: Tropical Rain Forest Biome, Tropical Rain Forests at Risk, Global Ecosystem, Desert Biome, and Temperate Biome. In addition to the science exhibits, the project will develop a series of science demonstrations to be used in the Brookings Interpretive Center and will allow for additional signage and audio effects to be added to the Climatron.
Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose seeks National Science Foundation grant support in the amount of $381,000 (55% of a total project cost of $693,188) to develop over a 24-month period a series of interactive exhibits exploring the subject of rhythm, including both obvious and lesser known manifestations within the natural and physical worlds. Drawing upon the scientific disciplines of mathematics, biology, physics and psychology, RHYTHM takes as its construct the idea of time, the articulation of which means for apprehending and understanding rhythm. Working with outside advisors in science education and specific content areas, Co-PI Michael Oppenheimer will develop and build 20 exhibits, which will be semi- permanently installed at Children's Discovery Museum and accessible to our annual visitor population of 350,000; exhibits will also be profiled on "Kids" Clubhouse," a television program developed jointly by the Museum and our local PBS affiliate, KTEH/54, viewed by 55,000 weekly. Matching funds are also being requested to support curricular materials and a traveling version of RHYTHM. Over a 2-year, 8-site tour the Association of Science and Technology Centers projects that the series will reach a national audience of more than 1,000,000 children and adults. As a comprehensive project, RHYTHM provides a compelling model for addressing imperatives articulated in Science for All Americans, the landmark report issued by Project 2061 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Located in San Jose, California, the Museum serves an expanding urban area characterized by extraordinary ethnic diversity: Santa Clara County's 1.5 million residents are 42% non-Anglo, while San Jose is 50.8% Hispanic, Asian and Black.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sally OsbergKoen LiemTom NielsenMichael Oppenheimer
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Texas will develop a 4,000 square-foot traveling science exhibit on FORENSICS: The Science of Criminal Investigation for circulation to eight major U.S. Cities through the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative (SMEC). FORENSICS will examine the scientific methods and technologies used in today's crime labs. Core science areas are: DNA profiling; Fingerprinting; Firearms Identification; Evidence Collection; Composites; Forensic Anthropology; Forensic Entomology; Forensic Geology; Odontology; Pathology; Serology; toxicology; Trace Evidence. The development of FORENSICS will draw from the expertise of a distinguished panel of forensic scientists, law enforcement officers, and science educators. FORENSICS will foster science process skills, problem-solving, and deductive reasoning by challenging visitors to solve a crime mystery. A Teacher's Resource Guide to the exhibit will promote indepth classroom investigations of forensics for middle grade (5-9) science lessons. The exhibit will open in Fort Worth in May of 1993, and then tour nationally to eight major U.S. cities, serving over 2.5 million American citizens during its SMEC travel itinerary.
Zoos have the opportunity to reach a large audience and to improve public understanding of biological principles. Zoos can go beyond creating an appreciation for nature by actively encouraging their visitors to apply these principles and take action on behalf of the environment. Tropic World: A Primate's View will improve the interpretation of an existing exhibit at Brookfield Zoo by encouraging visitors to experience a tropical rainforest from a non-human primate's perspective. Visitors will be challenged, by interactive forms of interpretation, to explore the similarities and differences between themselves and other primates. This experience will provide a framework for visitors to consider their own relationship with their environment. The project objectives are: 1. To improve public understanding that , like all organisms, primates use and depend on their environment. However, humans ar the only primate species that can choose how they impact their environment over extended time and space. 2. to motivate people to act on behalf of the natural world through conservation. 3. To contribute to the body of knowledge of how informal education affects people's knowledge of natural science topics, as well as the behavior of people in relation to conservation issues.
The North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences requests $544,390 for the design and implementation of Freshwater Westlands: Habitats of Beauty and Function. This project consists of two main components: a 2,800 sq. ft. exhibit and related education program. The exhibit will communicate ecological principles and provide visitors of all ages with an appreciation of the diversity and beauty of freshwater wetlands habitats. The exhibit is comprised of three main areas: an introductory theater, an immersion diorama, and an interactive hall. Exhibits are designed to present many aspects of freshwater wetland habitats, including hydrology, dendrochronology, organism structure, and function, life- cycle, ecological research, and environmental policy. Through interactive exhibits on scientific concepts, visitors will gain an appreciation of both a particular habitat and the process of science and its application to their lives. The major objectives of the education program are to help teachers of grades 4-8 to bring the study of freshwater wetlands into their classrooms and to employ experientially oriented pedagogy. The project will offer a teacher resource guide, prepared in collaboration with state science curriculum staff, a satellite workshop for teachers, a freshwater wetlands edition of Wildlife in North Carolina, a statewide publication prepared in collaboration with the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, and a classroom program in the museum.
The California Academy of Sciences, a major natural history institution located in San Francisco, will develop Life Through Time, a large permanent exhibition on evolution that will inform and challenge visitors as they "walk through" a series of exhibits which encourages them to touch and explore. The exhibition will cover the history of life on earth, how scientists recognize and evaluate change through time, the scientific method and process of discovering, and the impact of evolution. A teacher's educational resource kit with hands-on materials will be developed for use in the schools along with teacher training courses. The exhibition will reach a substantial audience, over a million and a half visitors per year. Additionally, 44% of the San Francisco elementary school children are visited each year by Academy docents, the mobile classroom reaches 7,000 Bay Area residents, over 5,000 children and adults take classes at the Academy and 10,000 school children visit the museum each year.
The New England Aquarium will develop an "inquiry-driven" gallery for the study of aquatic sciences in a move to go beyond the "naming" experiences in biology and environmental education. The project will focus on seven conceptual themes: 1) adaptation and evolution; 2) habitat; 3) life cycles; 4) development and metamorphosis; 5) species interactions; 6) energy flow: and 7) signals and senses. The exhibits will challenge the visitor with questions, puzzles and games. Curriculum materials will be developed for teachers along with a users guide for visitors. Outreach activities are planned, aimed at minority students and visitors. The Aquarium serves approximately 155,000 students and over one million visitors every year. The redesigned gallery will house eight tanks, ranging from a series of small tanks with accompanying video clips that display seldom seen behaviors such as the "birth" of seahorses, lobster molting, etc. to three 250-gallon tanks that will display ancient fishes and a variety of species showing different kinds of locomotion, color and sound. A 2500- gallon tank housing a school of fish will demonstrate different ways terrestrial and aquatic animals sense their surroundings. A 4000-gallon floor to ceiling tank will display a salt marsh on one side and a mangrove forest on the other and a 6000-gallon tank will house large groupers, moray eels and small gobies. The NSF award represents $273,971 out of a project total of $857,986.
This project at the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science, Durham, North Carolina, will create a 2000 square foot permanent exhibition, "The Science Behind Medicine", using recent advances in medical science and technology to illustrate basic science concepts. It will engage visitors through their strong interest in health and medicine, present valuable information about medical subjects, and use their interest to present underlying scientific concepts they would otherwise avoid. The exhibition will be organized around four topics: organ structure and function and organ replacement and transplantation; advances in medical imaging, including infrared, ultrasound and x-ray technologies; pharmaceutical pharmacology, biological receptors and molecular design; and sickle cell anemia and its molecular biology. Over five years, more than one million people will use the exhibit, including both highly educated residents of the Research Triangle area, and a Durham population that is disadvantaged and 50% black. Extensive subject area consultation and formative evaluation will be used in exhibition design. A close consulting relationship is planned with two museums with similar exhibit interests, and exhibit research and plans will be offered to other interested museums to encourage wider use of the project's results. A strong regional health sciences focus will benefit the project through academic, business, community and industry membership on a project planning committee, and from 50% local matching funding. Two corporate planning grants have been awarded to the project, and a major facilities expansion funded in part by a recent bond issue.
The Museum of Science in Boston proposes a major modification of its permanent New England Wildlife Zones exhibition hall in order to improve its effectiveness with visitors with impaired sight, hearing, or mobility. They will document and share with other museums the successful methods and techniques used in the exhibition development process is an effort to improve barrier free access in the country's more than 600 science and natural history museums. The museum has completed a preliminary needs assessment with the assistance of handicapped consultants, developed alternative design solutions to problems of limited accessibility and effectiveness for the hall's existing dioramas, and organized a design team that includes senior museum exhibition and education staff and a handicapped scientist and educator as Co-PI. The Massachusetts College of Art's Adaptive Environments Center will provide assistance in design for the handicapped and evaluation will be under the direction of George Hein, head of Lesley College's Program Evaluatlion and Research Group. Following an extensive design and evaluation process, new exhibit units will be constructed as educational adjuncts to the existing hall of dioramas, and the impact of the changes will be assessed, as part of a dissemination plan that will include popular and professional papers and a "how to" work book distributed to science museum exhibit designers with the assistance of the Association of Science Technology Centers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is a challenging project with the opportunity for a significant impact on handicapped individuals who are often excluded from the motivational and informational resources of science and natural history museums by unnecessary design limitations. The Museum of Science's commitment is strong, the project staff are highly qualified, and there is active participation by handicapped individuals in the project.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Larry BellCharles HowarthBetty Davidson