Working at a Museum is fun, rewarding, and challenging. And the Miami Science Museum runs on the energy of the people inside – visitors, employees, and our volunteers. One of our dedicated young volunteers, Carol, painted this picture of her experience at the Museum:

“My name is Carol, and I’m in my junior year of high school. I dedicate my free Saturdays to the Museum, and despite the fact that I’m a relatively new recruit – I’ve been doing this for about five months– I’m now a perfectly integrated cog in the machine of hardworking people that keeps this place running. There’s now a familiarity in my work that I appreciate, but every Saturday brings new challenges and pushes me to present the science a little more thoroughly and do my work a little bit better.

The responsibilities of the volunteer and the employee are nearly identical. They are responsible for checking out how things are doing on the floor, helping visitors, and, of course, explaining the science. This could range anywhere from conducting puppet shows, overseeing the Sea Lab, or pitching small demonstrations somewhere on the main museum floor. The principal reason I became a volunteer was for an opportunity to share my enthusiasm for science with the public, and there is certainly no lack of opportunity to do so. I’ve learned whilst doing demonstrations that catching people’s attention is an art. Usually stationed at an inconspicuous table towards the back of the Heart Smart exhibit, I learned quickly that I had to make things interesting. It’s always a challenge – and a challenge I relish. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing a passerby utterly fascinated by how something works, or a small child captivated by a scientific display. 

We’re a close-knit community, here at the Museum. My coworkers are all warm and friendly, and it didn’t take long before I knew all of them by name. While at work there are always things to do, there is an underlying casual and approachable atmosphere that is reflected in the Museum itself. 

I strongly encourage anyone interested in science to join the team. One often overlooks the effort required to maintain it, but the Museum is driven by the truly admirable dynamic of its employees.”

The New World Symphony

On Sunday, the Museum participated in the New World Symphony’s “A Family Affair,” and showed kids and families that music and science are actually very closely related. A spectacular concert performance by the symphony and Conducting Fellow Joshua Gersen celebrated the universally known music of composer John Williams, and included the film scores of Star Wars, Jurassic Park, E.T., and more. After the concert, families were invited to explore a building full of activities, and the Miami Science Museum was on hand to lead activities related to sound and light – what better way to connect music, science, and Star Wars? Kids were able to set up a series of mirrors to create a laser maze, use special filters to safely observe the Sun, and use musical triangles to test the Doppler Effect (the change in the pitch of a sound due to the relative motion of the source of a sound compared to the observer).

Listening to the symphony perform reinforces the power of music – how you can quite literally feel the energy of the stories being told through the sound. And learning about the science of sound and light with the Miami Science Museum’s activities reinforces the fact that science is all around us, in what we see, hear, feel, and understand.

Laser Maze!

Teachers of the gifted spend two days at the Museum making salt dance, building and testing mousetrap cars, launching rockets, and more. Thanks to the GPEX Science Collaborative Curriculum Challenge Grant, funded by the Florida Department of Education, 25 teachers from gifted student programs at eight Title-I MDCPS K-5 and K-8 schools recently participated in two days of professional development at the Museum.

The GPEX Science project goals focus on improving gifted students’ academic achievement in science, increasing the number of hands-on inquiry science lessons provided to gifted students, and providing professional development to all project staff. Participants learned to use the Museum’s After-school Program Exploring Science (APEX) curriculum to address science standards, and practiced inquiry-based teaching strategies. They are now using APEX Science in their classrooms throughout the school year, and are working collaboratively to develop extensions of the APEX Science curriculum to meet the needs of gifted students.

This is the third year that the Museum has collaborated with Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ Advanced Academics Program to provide hands-on science training, curriculum and materials for teachers of the gifted. To date, almost 4,000 K-5 gifted children have been served, and 3 published collections of APEX curriculum extensions for gifted children (developed by master teachers trained at Museum) have been distributed to all K-5 gifted teachers.

There are lots of different kinds of engineering – electrical, structural, mechanical, civil – and therefore, we need young people with lots of different interests and skills to fill those jobs for the next generation. And we especially want to encourage young women to explore engineering fields! Last Saturday the Museum held an event “engineered” to do just that. During our Engineering Day, activities and speakers showed off the creative and collaborative nature of engineering, and how engineers of all kinds are changing our world. Panels of successful female engineers provided some career awareness and inspiration by sharing their stories and some keys to their success, local engineering organizations and students showcased their innovations, and Museum staff delivered lots of fun hands-on activities and workshops for over 500 visitors.

This event was designed to stimulate the next generation of engineers, and could not have been carried out without the generous support of our current generation of engineers and other professionals. Special thanks goes to one of our newest members of the Miami Science Museum Board of Trustees, Vanessa Grout. As President/CEO of Douglas Elliman Florida, which served as title sponsor for the event, she was a source of unwavering support. And after attending the event, she felt that “the enthusiasm shared by the children as they participated in the learning exercises was inspiring.”

Other organizations that provided speakers, volunteers, and hands-on activities for the event included the National Engineers Week Foundation, IBM, Johnson Controls, Society of Women Engineers chapters from University of Miami and Florida International University, the Tau Beta Pi chapter at FIU, Girls Scouts of Tropical Florida, United States Air Force, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. Additionally, generous financial support from Morgan Energy, Douglas Elliman Real Estate, and the Cuban American Association of Civil Engineers allowed this event to be free of charge for all students, male and female, in grades K-12.

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day 2001 was the first national call-out to the profession to focus on getting more girls into engineering and technology. The founding partners were the Society of Women Engineers, MentorNet, IBM, the Association for Women in Science, the Women in Engineering ProActive Network, and the National Engineers Week Foundation. The day serves as catalyst and focal point for activism, and each year during Engineers Week, “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” encourages thousands of women engineers, with support from their male counterparts, to directly mentor more than one million girls and young women in K-12 with first-hand experiences in engineering.

The Museum’s involvement in the annual national celebration of Engineering Week, as well as “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day,” started three years ago as a direct result of our leadership role in the Girls RISE National Museum Network project, funded by the National Science Foundation.

We have all been there. You see a cool-looking  _______ (fill in the blank). Whether it’s a classic old radio from your grandparent’s house, a broken stereo you found in the closet, or your favorite laser disc that somehow got scratched, you think how great it would be to be able to fix this contraption and make it work again. Robert Cruz, the Assistant Operations Manager for the Planetarium here at the Museum, is one of those people that can make things work again. But Robert also wants to give others the chance to make that ______ work again. He has written several how-to articles, with step-by-step instructions and photos, and published them on the online “how-to” site Instructables. This website is allows you to tap into the knowledge of experts in a million different areas, and also gives you the chance to share your own expertise as well. Robert’s articles have even caught the attention of the editor, and have been featured in the Technology Section of Instructables. Click on the links below for Robert’s Instructables on…

Bringing new life to an old classic Marantz stereo receiver with a class D amp board

How to fix a classic American AM tabletop tube radio

How to polish out scratches on laser discs

Check back to Robert’s Instructables site to see what else you may learn!

You’re invited to a film screening at the Museum! Students in the Museum’s Upward Bound program have been serving as Eco-Ambassadors to south Florida’s unique environments, and with support from a State Farm Youth Advisory Board grant, have created their own Public Service Announcement videos. These videos are meant to bring awareness to the environmental issues in our community, such as water conservation and the exploitation of our natural resources. Check out the flyer below for more information, and we’ll see you there!

If you’ve ever seen one of those time-lapse videos – bustling crowds at Grand Central Station, swirling clouds steadily forming into a hurricane, or construction workers erecting a building bit by bit – it really makes you appreciate the action in a whole new way. In the case of those clouds, if you see just one image, it may look calm and serene. But if you see a sequence of images showing a hurricane forming, it can feel like an intense, dynamic spectacle. It’s kind of like a zoetrope, which is a device that has been around for thousands of years, that gives the illusion of motion through a series of images in rapid succession. In the image below, the little girl is watching the zoetrope at the Miami Science Museum.

When the little girl leans down to look through the slits in the side of the rotating cylinder, the images of the still-frame horses appear to be one galloping horse.

Documenting the construction of the new Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science is like that zoetrope. On any given day, a photo can be taken of lots of workers doing their jobs bit by bit. But looking at a few photos in sequence, you can begin to see the changes in action. Just imagine how the building and these workers would look in a time-lapse video. Or even through a zoetrope. Stay tuned for more action!

June 20, 2012 (For reference, notice the new Perez Art Museum Miami under construction in the background, and the Adrienne Arsht Center to the left)

September 10, 2012 (from the same viewpoint)

November 28, 2012 (from the same viewpoint; the Arsht Center is just off the image to the left)

It’s important for children – the next generation – to understand that food doesn’t magically appear on grocery store shelves. Growing food takes knowledge and skill, and in an urban environment like Miami, it’s important for our health, as well as the health of the environment, to have locally grown food. Hydroponics, the growing of plants using mineral nutrients and water – without soil – is a sustainable method of food production that provides more opportunties for urban gardening. The Museum has recently built on-site hydroponics exhibits, and now, with grants from the Dunwalke Foundation and the Envionmental Protection Agency, is working to install small hydroponic gardens at local schools.  The Museum’s Sara Tomeo, who is leading the project, is working mostly with 4th and 5th grade students from several area elementary schools, including Barbara Hawkins, North Miami, Miami Springs, Mater Academy East, Southside, and Coconut Grove,  as well as Nature Links, an organization on Virginia Key that specializes in helping young adults with disabilities.

Teachers at partner schools are encouraged to have groups of students help plant the system, and so far, eager students have done much of the work in setting up many of the systems. The goal is to have students learn to grow their own food throughout the school year, learn where some of the food they eat comes from, and see how different plants grow. Additionally, each school will learn how urban gardening can be applied based on the location of each school.  For example, many students in Southside Elementary, located in Brickell, live in high-rise buildings, and this project will teach them that they can have a garden at home - even if they don’t have a yard!

Barbara Hawkins Elementary: Students’ indoor hydroponics system, called “Emily’s Garden System,” sits on a classroom table with an adjustable grow-light to promote growth.

Barbara Hawkins Elementary: Students planted basil, rosemary, lemon balm, a tomato plant, and lettuce. Science teacher Craig Uptgrow has students monitoring growth rate, taking height measurements, and keeping records of what they do with the system.

Sara Tomeo has a background in Environmental Design and has worked as an intern at Disney’s “The Land” pavilion at EPCOT, working in hydroponic greenhouses. Sara has now helped to design and build the hydroponic exhibits at the Museum, and will play a role in the Museum’s plans to build aquaponics systems, which is another kind of sustainable food production system involving aquatic life.

With the help of a State Farm Youth Advisory Board grant and the Museum’s Reclamation Project, students participating in the Museum’s Upward Bound program are serving as Eco-Ambassadors to south Florida’s unique environments. We have all seen the PSAs (public service announcements) that make you stop and think, like NBC’s “The More You Know…” series. Now, our student Eco-Ambassadors are creating their own PSAs in a 5-day One Water Workshop. They’re learning about the whole process of creating a PSA, from scripting to filming to editing, and doing it all themselves in small groups of 4 or 5. The teamwork and creativity brought out in a project like this represents the same kind of effort that we need to apply to involving our communities in environmental conservation. These students are taking a first step towards that goal, by creating their PSAs on topics ranging from natural resource exploitation to restoration to environmental economics. The final films will be finished on January 7, and will be posted to the Miami Science Museum and State Farm Youth Advisory Board websites. So be sure to check back! Because the more you know…

According to a new report just released by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), average sea level around the world is projected to rise anywhere from 8 inches to over 6 feet by 2100.  That seems like a large range, so what does that mean?  NOAA developed the sea level rise range based on four scenarios, that include varying amounts of ice sheet loss  in Greenland and West Antarctica and different levels of ocean thermal expansion (warming of the ocean waters).  From 1900 to 2000, the average global sea level rose 8 inches, so it seems safe to say that another rise of 8 inches would be the absolute minimum we could expect by 2100.  At the high end, a rise of over 6 feet would occur if global ice sheets melted at the worst-case rate between now and 2100.  However, the rate at which glaciers and ice sheets will melt is the greatest source of uncertainty in sea level rise projections. No one has the answer for this difficult scientific question, as there is a lot more that goes on with ice dynamics than meets the eye.

So what does all this mean for South Florida?  Regional projections in sea level rise are a tough, but necessary business. While we can try and hope for the best, officials need to plan for large changes in sea level. (Better safe than sorry, right?)  South Florida is particularly vulnerable, with a large population along the east coast and the unique and fragile Everglades to the west. Not to mention the fact that Florida sits on top a limestone bed, which is very porous and allows for rising seawater to intrude into our freshwater drinking supply. Also, even a small increase in sea level can lead to a greater chance for urban flooding events, especially during storms (think Hurricane Sandy).  We all know that South Beach already floods during an afternoon thunderstorm, so this could very well become a more frequent occurrence throughout South Florida.  And depending on the extent of sea level rise, some places could disappear altogether. In the images below, you can see what Florida will look like (and which areas will be underwater) if the sea level rises to a given level. If you want to experiment with what U.S. coastlines will look like as the sea level rises, go to NOAA’s Sea Level Rise and Coast Flooding Impact Viewer.

To learn more about sea level rise and storm surge threats, come visit our two exhibits Water, Wind and Waves: Miami in a Changing Climate, funded by NOAA, and Hurricanes, funded by the FIU’s International Hurricane Research Center.

The Miami coastline, with a 1 foot increase in sea levels. Shades of blue indicate areas underwater; green indicates low-lying areas.

The Miami coastline, with a 3 foot increase in sea levels. Shades of blue indicate areas underwater; green indicates low-lying areas.

The Miami coastline, with a 6 foot increase in sea levels. Shades of blue indicate areas underwater; green indicates low-lying areas.

]]> http://www.miamisci.org/blog/put-on-your-rain-boots-the-water-is-rising/feed/ 0