The Museum of Natural History

On Wednesday the 24th of October 2007, myself along with my many classmates went on a small trip to the Museum of Natural History with our Professor Jason Smith. The purpose of this trip was to broaden our knowledge on global warning and to look around and identify varios things mentioned in Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," after which we were expected to elaborate on them. Upon arrival we were placed into groups in which we could work together as a team. It was a really fun and enlightening experience.

In Al Gore's film, he explains many things about greenhouse gases. He tells us what it is and how it functions. If I remember correctly, he uses a cartoon to get his message across. Alot of us were fascinated by this, but how many of us really stopped to think about the point he was trying to make? Greenhouse gases are many chemical compounds found in the Earth's atmosphere. These gases allow sunlight to enter the atmosphere freely. With water vapor, the planet is warm enough to support life over most of it's surface. This helps to make it the most important green house gas ever. That is why without it, the Earth's temperature would be below freezing. Solar radiation warms the Earth's surface. Some portions of the heat is radiated back to the atmosphere where it is trapped by greenhouse gases. My group also learned about the atmospheric layers. They are: thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere and trophosphere.

Climate can also be recorded in ice. According tof some information posted at the site underneath the preserved ice, the composition of air bubbles, dust and ice itself are trapped and this records changes in temperature,humidity,atmospheric circulation,volcanic activity,extent of sea ice and even atmospheric pollution by human activity. Ice has numerous components that make it up as stated above. In Al Gore's film, he showed pictures and animations to bring across his meanings. He showed us the climate system and how the sun's rays would bounce off of the ice back into the sky. This would cause the ice to melt faster. But because of all the pollutin that we as human's create, the populaton of ice has begun to deteriorate. Temperature which is the ratio of oxygen isotopes, sea salt which is sodium concentration and dust which has calcium concentration; help scientists notify what year the particular pillar of ice was formed and what temperature it was. ( look above for eg. of pillar of ice) The temperature normally exists at the top of the ice, the sea salt in the middle, and the dust at the bottom. In the core of the ice there is the cold, warm, and the younger dryas period. Whenever there are high levels of sea salt and dust, scientists know that there is the cold period. When the levels are vice versa, the period of time is usually warm.

Nature as Media

Another aspect of our assignment was to find a hall in the museum that dealt with living beings. Out of Spitzer's many hall's of Human Origin, my group members and I (La'Relle and Justin) decided to focus on Vertebrates. Dinosaurs being our main focus. Vertebrates are animals with a backbone and brain case. The first vertebrates to occupy the Earth were fishes. That was approximately 500 years ago. For 150 years they lived in water, then 360 years ago they moved to land. Since then, they have become very diverse. While strolling through the hall, we encountered a documentary film about veretebrates. The 5 minute movie was about how vertebrates came into existence. While viewing this short film, I noticed some artistic proofs of principle being; logos, pathos and ethos. Logos is another name for logic. In the film we heard that in Yucatan, there were tremendous changes in temperature and acid rain begun to fall. The dinosaurs could not adapt to this environment and they all died. However, birds survived. It has been said that birds came from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs had a certain type of hole in their nostril that made them extinct. Birds are said to have this same exact hole in the nostril that dinosaurs had 65 years ago. When my group and I entered the room where the short film was being aired, it was clear to me that ethos was present. The person talking about the animals (speaker) caught my attention as it begun. Her persuasive appeal was amazing. She had a voice that was soothing and tranquil, yet not enough to let one dose off. Along with me, I could see that other individuals caught in her webb. We all practically sat there in ooh's and ahh's as we learnt about dinosaurs. Personally, I was complaining because we were focusing on dinosaurs instead of mammals. But I have to admit that along with the crowd I was mesmerized.

One form of media that I could definately compare to the exhibit we saw was film. There was a whole lot of cinematic effects in there. I saw good use of lighting to help convey a point. I saw different angles, normal angle being the main one. There was a lot of camera movement as well. There was zooming and panning left and right, sometimes when there would be a chart; example of the different types of veretebrates, the camera would move on a crane going back from a close up/medium close up to reveal a long shot. Talking about animals in film is not much different than a film about anything else. Things are usually the same, special effects, you name it. I learnt alot that day. It was truly memorable.