• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Like Taking Alternative Energy to Newcastle: the National Academy of Sciences Opens a New Museum

Posted on: Friday, 25 June 2004, 06:00 CDT

One thing you are likely to conclude from a visit to the new Marian Koshland Science Museum is that size-at least in terms of square footage-isn't everything. You're also likely to come away with a few questions to ponder...and a desire to go back.

The Koshland museum, on the ground floor of the National Academy of Sciences' offices at 6th and E Streets, NW, in Washington, DC, isn't a museum in the traditional sense. There are few objects on display-just three exhibits occupy the 6000-square-foot space, and those exhibits feature subjects either too large or too small to be seen with the unaided eye. Yet these few high-tech presentations of scientific issues relevant to national public policymaking make it possible to visualize and understand volumes' worth of concepts and information.

The first exhibit, "Wonders of Science," is an interactive exploration of the nature of science and of the universe. The exploration begins when you take the controls in your own personal theatre-a "Seeing Science" kiosk-where with buttons and a joystick you can sample some recent scientific insights in astronomy, genomics, and satellite imaging. You can manipulate levels of dark matter and see its effects on trajectories of the universe's expansion. Or you may become mesmerized by a simulation of DNA replication, which is astounding no matter how familiar you are with this complicated molecular process. You can also give a virtual globe a spin and zoom in on any part of the world to see how it appeared at night in either 1993 or 2000, or as a color-coded comparison of the two. What you begin to appreciate from comparing these light emissions is how economies and populations have shifted in a relatively short time span.

Your time frame expands in the next exhibit, "Global Warming Facts and Our Future," beginning with photographs of a receding glacier and graphs showing temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels over the last century. In a deceptively simple demonstration, you can actually feel the difference in temperature from a model showing how the greenhouse effect works. The amount of information presented isn't immediately obvious, but the deeper you delve into the exhibit, the stronger your impression of the evidence becomes and the better you comprehend the various impacts of human activities. Everything on display here is based on reports compiled by the National Academies (www. nationalacademies.org/about/), but the data are presented in a way that makes science readily accessible to the general public. You conclude with a survey, conducted by Pennsylvania State University researchers, of the personal choices you might be willing to make and the impacts of those choices on reducing CO2 emissions and other environmental consequences.

The third exhibit, "Putting DNA to Work," portrays the basics of genomics, leavened with a bit of a matching game and a whodunit mystery. First you guess how much you have in common with a chimpanzee, a fruit fly, and yeast, among others. Then you move on to exploring DNA sequences and their significance in heredity, heritable diseases, and identifying individuals, particularly suspects in criminal cases. You can explore the genetic traits of maize, chromosome by chromosome, and learn more about genetically modified crops. You also see how viral genomes are analyzed and how those sequences are used to identify new infectious diseases, such as SARS.

Significant portions of these exhibits can be found on the museum's Web site, www.koshland-science-museum.org. "Wonders of Science" is a permanent exhibit, though its content will be updated periodically. The global warming and DNA exhibits are designed to travel and will be heading to science centers around the country in two years. The exhibits taking their places at the Koshland museum will be developed with the help of well-respected advisers from the eco-, bio-, geo-, and astrophysical sciences. The museum was initiated by a gift from Daniel Koshland, a biochemistry professor at the University of California-Berkeley, in memory of his wife, Marian Koshland, a research immunologist who was dedicated to science education.

Copyright American Institute of Biological Sciences Jun 2004

More News in this Category