Young Learn Why Earth is Oasis in Space

By SONIA SMITH

Earth is already endowed with frozen and liquid water, but it gained a few more frozen fruits and vegetables at Sunday’s Oasis in Space day at the Louisiana Art and Science Museum.

Museum educators planned Oasis in Space day to teach children about Earth’s unique place in the solar system, as the only planet boasting liquid water and an atmosphere capable of supporting life, said Jon Elvert, director of the Irene R. Pennington Planetarium.

Julian Norman, an articulate, bubbly first-grader at LSU Lab School, said he had frozen a flower, lettuce leaves, a pingpong ball and an apple at the liquid nitrogen station, his favorite of the day’s six stations.

Orhan Kizilkaya and LSU materials science doctoral student Ramana Gunda came from the LSU Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices hauling several bottles of liquid nitrogen and a desire to educate children.

Norman, 6, marveled as he shattered the red carnation he had just dipped in a metal bowl of liquid nitrogen.

"I did it," 3-year-old Josiah Castillo of Prairieville shouted after shattering a frozen apple with a hammer.

Kizilkaya also wowed the youngsters by making dry ice from carbon dioxide gas, sprinkling the cold substance on the table for tiny fingers to touch.

Unlike its neighbors Venus and Mars, Earth has liquid water and an atmosphere capable of supporting life, Elvert said.

"Without water, there is no life," he said.

Elvert hopes children and their families "learned something about atmospheres and why Earth is an oasis in space," he said.

Some 292 children and adults attended the day’s events, according to LASM special events coordinator Wanda Peck.

Oasis in Space day coincided with the premiere of the planetarium’s newest sky show of the same name.

The Irene R. Pennington Planetarium, with its 60-foot dome, is the largest planetarium in the southeastern United States, Elvert said.

Eight-year-old Alaina Carpenter’s favorite station was the river station.

"You can make your own river!" she exclaimed about the Walnut Bayou River Model, which simulates river currents and sediment flow.

Al Hindrichs, 46, an environmental scientist with the state Office of Environmental Assessment, smoothed the crushed walnut shells before tracing a "riverbed" with his fingers for water to flow through.

Levees, Hindrichs noted, "lock water into one spot so it can no longer shift out and build the marshes up."