Discoveries from a trip to the California Science Center

               Just this past week, I visited the California Science Center, a museum concerning science and technology, located in Exposition Park, California. The California Science Center has a large variety of exhibits and demonstrations that make learning about science an interactive and exciting experience. For example, at the Science Center you can expect to learn about the various ecosystems, biological processes, and space technology. If you are a California resident or a Los Angeles resident, I highly recommend visiting the Science Center. Oh, and did I mention that entry into the permanent exhibits is free?!?!
           Although I enjoyed essentially everything pertaining to the Science Center, I found myself particularly fascinated around the information concerning human impact on the environment. One exhibit known as the Global Zone had plentiful of information about Earth being an ecosystem as a whole. A portion of this exhibit included data about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.


*Note this legend provided by the California Science Center (courtesy of NASA JPL) that provides information regarding the ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide. The purple color refers to 360 ppm of carbon dioxide, whereas the red color refers to a large amount of carbon dioxide, valued at 410 ppm.

With this information given, the viewer of the exhibit is free to see these how exactly these values correspond to different areas on Earth. The viewer is able to scan through different months within the past year and observe how these values change over time.

 When I scanned to April 2016, this is what I saw.

- This is a physical Earth that was placed in the center of the exhibit. This physical version of the Earth showed that for essentially the whole Earth, the ppm value of carbon dioxide was 410, the highest possible value on the scale provided. Scary isn't? Although I didn't take pictures of the previous months, I observed that the value of ppm drastically spiked from about 360 ppm to 410 ppm in April.

- Here is the same data. but provided in a digital form.
















Although I myself have been very aware of the fact that industrial processes have largely contributed to the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, this exhibit helped me further realize just how drastic that increase is. Essentially our whole EARTH, is covered in extremely large amounts of carbon dioxide. The presence of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere poses huge threats to the environment and organism health, and can lead to global warming, acid rain, eutrophication, and ozone depletion. As always, it is crucial that we all ensure to opt for public transportation/walking and limit energy use to prevent the further entry of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.


     Another exhibit I found something interesting out was the L.A Zone, located in the Ecosystems exhibit. The L.A Zone showed that although Los Angeles is an environment composed of both man-made and natural entities, it still governs the characteristics of an ecosystem. The L.A Zone specifically focused on the difficulties and challenges that humans face in urban areas when it comes to energy, waster, water, and wildlife.
     Now, I didn't get to look that much into this exhibit, but one portion that caught my attention was the landfill portion.

-A glass pillar the height of the room itself was filled up of various landfill components, more specifically plastic. Now, this looks like an excessive amount of plastic right? This amount of plastic doesn't even remotely compare to the amount of plastic that fills landfills, streets, and oceans. Please, remember to limit your use of plastic and recycle!

Here are some other pictures from the landfill portion of the L.A Zone.

All in all, the California Science Center is a great museum to not only learn about science in general, but to fundamentally understand human impact on the environment.