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.
The Pratt Museum, a natural history museum in Southcentral Alaska, proposes to bring before the public an exhibition on oil pollution. Using the historic disaster of the March 1989 grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the museum presents a dramatic, grassroots story of the desperate struggle to protect the environment and preserve traditional lifestyles. The exhibit's purpose is to increase public awareness of national and global issues pertaining to the development, transportation, and use of petroleum. The 1,500 square foot presentation shows what an oil spill is like through photographs, maps, graphics, and three- dimensional participatory elements. The exhibit is scheduled to open at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History in early 1991, beginning a three-year tour of 12 museums that will reach between 1.5 and 2 million viewers. The NSF contribution will support the circulation of the exhibit and the development of interactive components to enhance both the permanent and traveling presentations. Computerized graphic displays and an educational chest of learning tools will enhance the basic exhibit through multi- sensory activities designed for hands-on gallery use, increasing accessibility for children and disabled visitors. This cooperative project invloves private foundations, individuals, the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, in collaboration with the University of Chicago, proposes to develop a major new exhibit on "Imaging Science." Imaging science is a new field rapidly emerging from its roots in the physical, biological, and behavioral sciences, and the graphic arts, and is becoming increasingly important in all areas of scientific research. The primary rationale for developing an exhibit about imaging science, and related programming, is to enhance the overall scientific literacy of four million visitors that come to the Museum each year. In view of the scientific, medical, educational, and cultural value of images, the Museum and University of Chicago believe that an exhibit on imaging science will have broad appeal to museum visitors of many different ages and backgrounds. Today, scientific imaging empowers us to look inward, at the infinite complexity of ourselves, and outward to the edge of our universe. The main thrust of the exhibit will be to teach visitors how images communicate knowledge. Technological advances in computer workstations, that are revolutionizing scientific study, will be highlighted. Exhibit sections will also identify imaging science breakthroughs that will impact the lives of students and members of the workforce in the 1990s and beyond.
The Exploratorium proposes to create a multidimensional exhibition on the theme of navigation. The exhibition proper will contain approximately 20 new interactive exhibits dealing with topics of human orientation, wayfinding/exploration, the importance of time in navigation, maps and navigation traditions. Alongside the exhibits we will display real navigational artifacts borrowed from other museums. We have identified approximately 40 existing exhibits which, while not in the main show, will receive textual modification to show their relation to navigational topics. In addition to the exhibition of artifacts and interactive exhibits, we will present a series of lectures, theme weekends, and demonstrations of navigational techniques. During the run of the show we will host a Symposium On The American Encounter wherein we will hold an open forum of lectures and discussion of historical, anthropological and social consequences of cultural encounter on the North American Continent. We will produce both a brochure and a high quality catalog for this show. In addition we will create written "pathways" of organization of this museum-wide show to bring to focus different features and approaches to navigation. Our education departments will play a leading role in creating more formal programs for our visitors. The physical show will be reproduced in a travelling version to tour nine venues in the three years following its opening at the Exploratorium. We will collect the results of our researchers in a dissemination package to be made available to others in the field.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Thomas HumphreyPeter RichardsMichael Pearce
A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES is a five-part series to be produced by WETA fornational PBS broadcast in the 1993-94 season. The series is to be adapted from the best- selling book of the same title. Its author, Diane Ackerman, will present the programs and collaborate with the producers throughout. Each program will focus on a single sense: smell, touch, taste, hearing and vision respectively. Each will explore: how the world is sensed by animals and humans, including the evolution of the sense; what is perceived; and how human beings reconstruct and recreate their sensory worlds, through cuisines and perfumes, music, sculpture and painting. Shot on location around the world, these documentary films will incorporate viewpoints from anatomy, physiology and neurochemistry, experimental and perceptual psychology, cultural anthropology, literature, art, music and history. Compelling stories and illustrative vignettes and precise graphic animation will arise from rigorous research, in collaboration with a board of advisors. By unifying material from science and the arts and humanities, the series will reach a general audience. Viewers will be awakened to a new awareness of the range and power of their senses. Companion materials for schools will extend the series to the formal learning environment and will motivate further study.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Richard HuttonDavid McGowanRichard Thomas
Children's Television Workshop is embaring on a ground- breaking experiment in informal science education: the production of an entertaining animated series of 13 half- hour programs for Saturday morning commercial television, based on David Macaulay's bestselling book, The Way Things Work. The audience will be six- to eleven-year olds, with special focus on minority and economically disadvantaged children. The series' primary goal will be to entertain children with lively and appealing characters in a dramatic storyline, while stimulating children's interest in the scientific principles behind the workings of familiar machines and illustrating the action of their parts. NSF support will enable CTW to adapt the CTW Model -- the collaborative process used in earlier NSF-supported programs, 3-2-1 Contact and Square One Tv -- to the opportunities of the animation format and the realities of the partnership with a commercial network. Through a development agreement with CBS, CTW has begun the process of developing the series concept, characters, and storylines. Upon successful completion of this phase, production will follow with an anticipated broadcast premiere in fall 1992. NSF's $2.36 million support will allow this project to be possible by completing the series' funding; it will allow CTW to conduct significant formative research and summative analyses of educational impact, and to reach large minority and economically disadvantaged audiences through wider promotion and the creation and distribution of complementary print materials.
The middle-school and high-school years are a period of change and crystalization in terms of life goals, disciplinary and course preferences, and social and political attitudes. The literature provides a number of cross-sectional descriptions and models concerning cognitive and attitudinal development during adolescence and young adulthood, but there are no longitudinal data available to study these processes. The proposed longitudinal study will examine the (1) development of interest in science and mathematics, (2) the growth of scientific literacy, (3) the development of attentiveness to science and technology issues, and (4) the attraction to careers in science and engineering among two national cohorts of adolescents and young adults. One cohort will begin with a national sample of 3,000 seventh graders and follow them through the 10th grade. The second cohort will begin with a national sample of 3,000 10th graders and follow them for the next four years through the first full year after high school. Data will be collected from students, teachers, counselors, principals, and parents. A purposive sample of two or three school districts with exemplary elementary school science and mathematics education programs will be selected and comparable data will be collected in these districts. The analysis will consist of a series of expanding multivariate developmental models that will seek to understand cognitive and attitudinal growth and change in the context of family, school, and peer influences. Each wave of data collection will provide an opportunity to examine cognitive and attitudinal change measures in an increasingly rich context of previous measures. Periodic reports will be issued with each cycle of data collection and the data will be made available to other scholars on a timely basis. The first phase of the project, being funded at this time, provides approximately 15 months for instrument development and pilot testing, for sample selection, for monitor selection and training, and for working with the research advisory committee.
The American Psychological Association, in cooperation with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), will develop a series of exhibits on psychology using a discovery room/science laboratory approach. The exhibition will, for the first time, offer museum visitors a first hand opportunity to explore the tools, methods, and concepts of psychology in such areas as thinking and feeling, dreaming and sleeping, perceiving and communicating. The exhibition will travel to eight museums over 30 months through the ASTC traveling exhibition service and will reach over a million visitors. A wide selection of additional materials and resources such as films, seminars, lectures and workshops will be offered to the participating museums to extend the impact of the exhibition. Plans of the exhibits will be made available to other museums. NSF support represents less than 50% of the total cost of the project.
The California Museum of Science and Industry will create a 3,000 square foot permanent exhibition of hands-on participatory exhibits on chemistry and chemical phenomena that will allow visitors to manipulate the variables of chemical systems. Forty exhibit units will be organized in clusters in that represent the basic concepts of properties of atoms and molecules, molecular structure and chemical reactions, stability of molecules and rates of reactions, forces between atoms and molecules and energy of atoms and molecules. The exhibition will use state-of-the-art technology to present chemical experiments previously left to the lab bench or the demonstration table. Interactive computers and videodiscs will be used where danger or complexity prevents the visitor from using "the real thing." Exhibit content will be proved in prototype form and tested on museum staff, visitors, and school groups prior to final design and construction. NSF support will be used in the design and prototype phases, and an "exhibit cookbook" of exhibit technologies for use by other museums will be created. The project has already attracted more than $175,000 of matching funds towards a total of $800,000 in non-NSF matching funds to support its $1,100,000 budget.
The evolution of language, perhaps two hundred thousand years ago, led to our ability to think abstractly, invent logic, store and exchange ideas and to create culture. What language is, how it works and how it distinguishes us from others is the subject of a four part public television series produced by Equinox Films, Inc., New York, N.Y. To examine language, the series will be filmed in laboratories and universities throughout the United States and on the streetcorners to capture the everyday life and language of Americans. Additionally, parts of the film will be shot in Japan, a sophisticated culture with a completely different language type from ours and in North Central Australia and Papua, New Guinea, where two exotic languages of special interest are spoken. Language is so taken for granted that most of us do not question its nature. Most educated people are unaware even of the revolution that took place in the study of language about 30 years ago. The intriguing interplay between language as a grammatical system and, conversely, as a living changing part of human expression is a complicated and fascinating journey. Exploring the development of language is a challenging project and one that has been imaginatively conceived and developed. The P.I. is highly respected with a number of credits and awards in television production. The co-P.I. is a noted linguist and scholar. The list of linguistic experts who are advisors to the project represents some of the top scholars in the field. All reviewers were extremely enthusiastic about the series and recommended funding. An award of $400,000 with $200,000 in FY'87 and $200,000 in FY'88 is recommended.
WGBH Boston and its NOVA production group will produce a series of eight one hour television programs titled "Life: Cracking the Code". The series will cover recent advances in molecular biology, the record of personal quest and achievement of many of the biologists who have contributed to these advances, the social costs and benefits that have resulted and the ethical questions that new knowledge and new abilities in biology have generated. Individual programs will include "The Language of Life" on the discovery of DNA's role in molecular biology, "Molecular Machines" on proteins; "Designing the World to Order" on practical consequences of the new biology, "When Cells Rebel" on the processes involved in cancer, and "Between Self and Other" on the immune function. The series will be produced for prime time PBS evening broadcast to an audience of more than twelve million individuals by a co- production by the NOVA science unit at WGBH and the Chedd-Angier Production Company. Scientific advice and consulting will be provided by Harvard's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and a project advisory committee composed of seven distinguished scholars chaired by Prof. David Baltimore. The series production budget will be approximately $ 4.2 million. This new science series on DNA, molecular biology and its new technologies will cover one of the great intellectual achievements of our time. It will provide timely information about an area of scientific discovery that is rapidly transforming many aspects of our life. The series will, in addition, document the rich recent history of molecular biology with the participation of many of the original researchers who are still alive and active in their fields.