To provide the general public with an understanding of the basic principles that underlie the transmission, storage, and retrieval of information, the Fleet Center proposes to build SIGNALS, a 4,500 square foot exhibition. SIGNALS will be divided into three sections, of approximately 15 interactive exhibits each, which explore the physical principles of wave motion, the properties of electromagnetic pulses useful for communications, and the signal processing that enables us to handle information. An Advisory Committee comprised of highly qualified individuals at the leading edge of their fields will support development of SIGNALS; a very experienced team of exhibit developers will fabricate the exhibition. SIGNALS will become a permanent exhibition in an expanded Fleet Center, where it is expected to attract 1 million visitors a year, including at least 100,000 K-12 students. Since the lack of technological understanding is a national problem, we propose to build a 3,000 square foot traveling version of SIGNALS, contingent upon an NSF review of the completed permanent exhibition. The total cost for both exhibitions is $1,983,480. We are requesting $985,900 from NSF: $692,800 for the permanent exhibition and $293,100 for the traveling exhibition. The project will begin in June, 1992, and be completed by June, 1996.
Ornithology is one of the few scientific disciplines to which amateurs can still make significant contributions. Whether they observe birds at a feeder, count birds for a national census, or conduct a simple experiment, their activities contribute greatly to our knowledge of birds. Furthermore, participants in bird study programs not only learn about birds, they also become more aware of environmental problems. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology exists to facilitate such amateur involvement and education. This proposal is aimed at strengthening our education programs and expanding them to include under-served audiences in the inner city. We propose to evaluate the extent to which our radio program, magazine, and Project FeederWatch appeal to various audiences and how effective these programs are at communicating information about birds and in stimulating involvement. Based on this evaluation, we will modify our programs, then evaluate them again. We are also proposing a brand-new volunteer-assisted data gathering program, which we call the National Science Experiment. In cooperation with other organizations, volunteers will look at the biology of pigeons in our cities, food preferences of winter birds across the United States, and the habitat requirements of neotropical migrant tanagers. The results of these studies will be of interest to both ornithologists and birders; furthermore, participants in the project will gain first-hand involvement with the process of science.
National Public Radio is seeking to expand its coverage of scientific issues in two ways: through the creation of a new Environmental Reporting Unit, and through the introduction of SCIENCE FRIDAY, a two hour call-in talk show dedicated to scientific issues. Each of these projects will be supported by an extensive outreach effort targeted at local schools, community groups, science museums, and nature centers. Through the Environmental Reporting Unit, NPR plans to produce eight to ten half hour documentary reports per year on critical environmental issues. Each of these reports will be available to listeners on cassette and will be accompanied by supporting documentation. The SCIENCE FRIDAY team will engage NPR's audience in a lively debate on questions ranging from nuclear physics to archaeology. In addition, SCIENCE FRIDAY will travel to high schools and museums across the country and engage in question and answer sessions with students, teachers, parents and school administrators. These "on the road" segments will be supplemented by live broadcasts from annual meetings of the National Association for Science (NAS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Through these efforts, NPR will be able to draw listener attention to the need for improved science and mathematics education, while helping listeners make informed evaluations of current public policy in these areas.
The Science Museum of Connecticut (SMC) proposes a three- year exhibit project called The State of the Environment. This cost-effective project will serve over 500,000 citizens a year by producing two permanent exhibits - 2400 sf for SMC and 400 sf for SMD's Roaring Brook Nature Center -- and eight traveling exhibits for use primarily in connecticut's Priority schools. These innovative exhibits use highly accurate sculptural relief maps which are animated by laser graphics and responsive to visitor inquiries through a research-calibre database containing vast information on Connecticut's environment. Thorough evaluation will help SMC design visitor experiences that make map-database interaction attractive, easy to use and understand, and educationally satisfying. State accredited teacher workshops will give educators a firm grasp of database capabilities prior to its use in the traveling exhibits for schools. Traveling exhibits will support goals in Connecticut's NSF-funded Statewide Initiative. Teacher's Guides will facilitate in-dept investigations for high school science lessons. These exhibits will provide hands- on experiences with professional tools for environmental research, show how environmental maps are made, teach basic principles of environmental science, and provide-in-depth information about the ecology of an entire state.
Zoos have the opportunity to reach a large audience and to improve public understanding of biological principles. Zoos can go beyond creating an appreciation for nature by actively encouraging their visitors to apply these principles and take action on behalf of the environment. Tropic World: A Primate's View will improve the interpretation of an existing exhibit at Brookfield Zoo by encouraging visitors to experience a tropical rainforest from a non-human primate's perspective. Visitors will be challenged, by interactive forms of interpretation, to explore the similarities and differences between themselves and other primates. This experience will provide a framework for visitors to consider their own relationship with their environment. The project objectives are: 1. To improve public understanding that , like all organisms, primates use and depend on their environment. However, humans ar the only primate species that can choose how they impact their environment over extended time and space. 2. to motivate people to act on behalf of the natural world through conservation. 3. To contribute to the body of knowledge of how informal education affects people's knowledge of natural science topics, as well as the behavior of people in relation to conservation issues.
WGBH Educational Foundation seeks support from NSF to add a Science Unit to its Descriptive Video Service. In their original proposal they cited three objectives: to produce universally available narrative audio descriptions of public television science program for visually impaired Americans, to disseminate information regarding the availability of the programs, and to raise funds for additional program descriptions. A modest evaluation plan was included. With the funds requested here, they will describe NOVA, NATURE, and THE NEW EXPLORERS. Other programs will be added in the subsequent years. This request is for the support of the first year of a three-year projection.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Laurie EverettGerry FieldSharon KingLaura Oftedahl
The North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences requests $544,390 for the design and implementation of Freshwater Westlands: Habitats of Beauty and Function. This project consists of two main components: a 2,800 sq. ft. exhibit and related education program. The exhibit will communicate ecological principles and provide visitors of all ages with an appreciation of the diversity and beauty of freshwater wetlands habitats. The exhibit is comprised of three main areas: an introductory theater, an immersion diorama, and an interactive hall. Exhibits are designed to present many aspects of freshwater wetland habitats, including hydrology, dendrochronology, organism structure, and function, life- cycle, ecological research, and environmental policy. Through interactive exhibits on scientific concepts, visitors will gain an appreciation of both a particular habitat and the process of science and its application to their lives. The major objectives of the education program are to help teachers of grades 4-8 to bring the study of freshwater wetlands into their classrooms and to employ experientially oriented pedagogy. The project will offer a teacher resource guide, prepared in collaboration with state science curriculum staff, a satellite workshop for teachers, a freshwater wetlands edition of Wildlife in North Carolina, a statewide publication prepared in collaboration with the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, and a classroom program in the museum.
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 Educational Film Center will complete production of a science, engineering, and technology careers exhibit and informal science education project for use in science museums, libraries, schools, and community locations. The twelve additional interactive and linear career profiles to be produced under this grant will bring the total number of careers available in a fully interactive mode to thirty-two. Users will be able to explore each of these careers with first person video profiles of people in science and engineering and animated/reality video simulations of work experiences in these fields. The exhibit also with provide guidance to help users make decisions about education and career choices and will include a database of information about approximately 200 additional science and math-based professions. The project also will undertake the development and testing of eight permanent model Family Outreach Science Career Education Centers in eight cities. These centers will be based on and will expand upon the experience the project had in their earlier model Parent Outreach Science Career Program. Utilization support will be provided through special target leader guides, presentations and workshops at national and regional meetings of user organizations and groups, and a SETQuest bulletin board and e-mail network for the exchange of user science career programming. This project is a collaborative effort among four organizations: The Educational Film Center (EFC) is responsible for management of the project and for the development of production of the software and the documentary video profiles; COMAP is responsible for selecting and hiring content consultants, for formative and summative evaluation, and will jointly market and distribute the material with EFC; The New York Hall of Science is responsible for the exhibit kiosk and graphics, the design and development of the workbook and museum installation print components of the project, and will serve as principal test site for the exhibit; and the AAAS is coordinating the design, implementation, and testing of parent outreach program. All of the organizations will be involved in presentations and dissemination of project information to the informal and formal education communities.
The Science Center of Connecticut will develop, evaluate, and install 57 mathematical exhibit activities in its new 160,000 sq. ft. exhibit facility. These activities will engage visitors in learning how math is an integral part of daily life and a necessary skill in many careers. Eight math topics will be treated: probability and statistics; relative scale; geometry; symmetry; math puzzles; chaos and fractals; numbers, measurements, and calculations; and estimations. The hands-on activities will range from involvement with low-tech to high- tech, computerized activities. The target audience is people nine and up and it will be available to the museums 500,000 annual visitors. The mathematics activities will be distributed throughout the museum and math will serve as a integrating theme for all the museum's exhibits. The topics are aligned with Connecticut s SSI program which focuses on applied mathematics in context of the science disciplines. Within the state, plans are taking shape to link with Connecticut Public Television to broadcast electronic field trips to the museum through Knowledge Network. Nationally, museum staff members will make presentations at both museum and mathematics education meetings to other museum professionals. The concept of thematic integration throughout the museum will be disseminated through the state and the nation.
The videodisc-based exhibit, the Powers of Ten in Time, will allow museum visitors to explore the unseen world of natural change - events that occur too quickly or too slowly to be perceived. Through the use of a touch screen and interactive software, users will be able to, in effect, speed up or slow down timeto witness changes that lie outside of the limits of human time perception. Visitors will see scenes such as a forest recovering after a fire, a wall of earth crumbling from erosion, tides coming in and out, the intricate motions of complex machinery and molecules colliding and reacting to produce fire. The videodiscs will contain more than 100 short video segments depicting a wide range of phenomena. We will use time-lapse footage, slow-motion clips and animations to show changes occurring over time periods form 300,000,000 to femtoseconds. Not only will museum visitors be able to watch these video segments at their own pace and in order they choose, they will also be able to learn more about such phenomena through on- screen textual and graphical explanations. The goal of the project is to engage museum visitors with captivating photographic segments, explain the phenomena shown with supplemental text and graphics, and stimulate them to look at the world in a new way - not just with their eyes, but with their minds and imaginations.
The goal of the project is to produce a one hour television documentary and a series of video teaching modules which explore a wide range of scientific disciplines in an exciting manner by presenting the story of how these disciplines are used in the preparation and racing of an Indianapolis race car. This program will be distributed to a wide audience through its broadcast by PBS and cable sports networks; through dissemination to classrooms and museums nationwide; and through distribution via agencies that focus on bringing educational programs to youth and minorities across the country. We expect to attract a new audience to science, the millions of Americans who are infatuated by automobiles. This is an audience that cuts across age, ethnic and racial distinctions in America today. This exciting story of applied science should also appeal to American youth in a way that more traditional science stories do not. The major scientific disciplines involved in the project are: basic engineering, mathematics and physics, aerodynamics, materials science, mechanics, telemetry and computer aided design. This project is submitted to the Informal Science Education Program. The specific content of this project will be aimed at an audience with little background in science. High-school students and adults should be able to understand all the principles presented. Younger audiences will gain insight into how a knowledge of science is fundamental to a sport that many of them find fascinating.