Monthly Archives: June 2008

astronomy, astronomy education, astronomy news, Mars, Mars Phoenix Lander

Digging Mars

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The Saga of the Dirt (and an Update)

https://i0.wp.com/phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/sm_4219.jpg?resize=295%2C295I need the guys working on the dirt experiments on the Mars Phoenix Lander to help me with my floor-cleaning methods. I was doing some tidying up in my overstuffed office the other day. It’s something I do when I’m stuck in the middle of writing something and a case of temporary brain freeze hits. Usually I take a break and go get a coffee or something, but it’s too hot for coffee these days. So, sometimes I’ll do a little rearranging of the stuff in my office.

So, I cleared out some space where I’d had some books and papers piled up, and noticed a little dust and dirt on the floor. I swept it up into the dust pan, but when I went to toss it into the trash, I missed and the dirt hit a box of papers that I was getting ready to recycle.

All this put me in mind of the Mars Phoenix lander. (Yes, I really DO think that way…) The other day the digger arm (technical term) got a good clump of dirt from the surface and swung around to deposit the dirt into one of the lander’s onboard ovens. It didn’t actually miss the oven. It landed more or less in the right place, but apparently it was too clumpy to break into small enough pieces to make it into the oven. So, unlike my dirt-tossing abilities, there’s not much of a problem with the lander arm and its delivery method. It would appear that the dirt on Mars — at least at that location — clumps together rather tightly. And, the lander is now learning to shake those dirtballs apart before it can bake ’em. I should be so talented!

UPDATE: They’ve got dirt in the oven! Check out the Phoenix Lander site for more details. https://i0.wp.com/phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/sm_4470.jpg?w=474

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Museum Science

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What Does It Teach?

Over the weekend we went in to Boston for a day. Along with everything else he does, Mark also plays tuba for a concert band in Concord, MA, and they played in the Boston Festival of Bands. It’s a very cool way to spend an afternoon, sitting in historic Faneuil Hall, where so much of early American history was made, listening to some amazing music. As I listened, I looked around at the pictures on the walls, showing George Washington (with his horse), a scene from an early meeting of patriots, and so on. It occurred to me that these stylized “snapshots” of history are sometimes the only way people have of visualizing what those early days of the U.S. were like. But, they don’t really convey the day-to-day life for those people, or the look and feel of reality as it was back then.  That’s history for you, I suppose, but it really doesn’t  (and probably can’t) let you know what it was really like ‘way back then…

Well, that got me to thinking about museum exhibits in general and science museum exhibits in particular. Granted, I write science museum exhibits, and I’m pretty good at it, but I always wonder what we’re teaching with them.  Yes, I know there are whole schools of thought about what an exhibit should say, how many words and images it has to get its message across, and so on. But, do exhibits (of any kind) really convey how science is done and how it feels to do it?  Do they really give a visitor the “feel’ of science?  I often ask myself those questions when I see exhibits.

I don’t have good answers, but I do know that exhibits are NOT doing science; they talk about it. Even if it’s a hands-on exhibit, it’s a very small part of what it IS to DO science. So, a good science museum tries to have exhibits that let you get your hands on some scientific “toys” as well as some that just let you stand and look and think about the message. But, I still wonder..what are we teaching?  What’s the message that gets across about science?