D(NA)-Day

by Luigi Anzivino

April 25th was National DNA Day: created in order to commemorate the completion of the human genome project, it served as an excuse for the explainers to express their unabated love for DNA and everything sciency and geeky. Dawn had been so excited about it that she vowed off caffeine for the week preceding the event, lest the combination cause her to blow a gasket. In fact, on the day of, she showed up, to everybody’s delight, with custom made DNA t-shirts for everyone to wear. This led to a frenzy of customization, tomfoolery, and shenanigans. Case in point (click to biggify photos):

DNA buccaneers: Akiko goes for a low-cut look, while Andre looks badass in cut sleeves.

Sometimes decisions required consultations and extended revisions. The whiteboard helped quite a bit to avoid some fashion faux pas. Here’s a glimpse into the creative process:

Andre lends his fashion-forward sensibility to Ryan.

Eventually, Ryan found his groove with a style meshing the down-to-earth flavor of Fred Flintstone with the joie de vivre of Richard Simmons:

Fred Simmons?

Training was a hoot too! Karen taught us to make DNA jewelery:

Moleculary accurate, too! Down to the last hydrogen bond.

All in all, it was good explainer mayhem. So a big thanks to Our Lady of DNA, Dawn, who had an extra special DNA extraction demo, squeezing out our beloved grey goo from samples as wild as cow’s eye blood and orange juice:

Yep, that’s blood on the left! I believe it’s followed by spit (I mean, cheek cells…), wheat germ, and orange juice. Also, please admire the DNA earrings made in jewelery class.

Now all we need is a way to realize our scheme to establish a Galactic Paul Doherty Day…

Hallelujah! I Believe! Hallelujah!

by ryan

Don’t Worry.
My concussion didn’t actually result in a grand religious conversion. But I was reading an article in the newspaper this morning and thought I’d put a link in the blog (Thank Goodness, the jumbled letters in my damaged brain unscrambled at about 6:00am on Sunday, just in time to get my weekly news fix).

Noah’s Ark Museum

While The Skirball Children’s Center has a wildly different purpose than the ExploratOrium, I thought some of the comments about art, the balance between a space for kids and adults, and the general mission of the museum were pretty interesting.
Maybe we can visit on a road trip/field trip weekend adventure in LA.

I promise not to fall off any poles!

Blogging about Blogging

by ryan

I just wanted to share the really neat conversation that a few of us got to have with some women who were starting a science learning center in Montana. They visited the exploratorium to share ideas about teaching, outreach, and team-building. They were especially interested in our foray into the blogosphere, as they were thinking about starting a my-space type community for their explainers. Apparently, as far as they could find out on the internet, we were the only group of explainer-like-museum-people doing a blog (They found the site on google after the Explo reps told them that no such blog existed). I guess we’re still an underground phenomenon.

As we were talking, we started to have some really exciting ideas about what could happen if this blog takes off and is joined by other explainer blogs around the country. Alot of museums use exploratorium designed exibits and it would be great to share info about how the same exhibits work in different spaces. It would also be awesome to share ideas with other groups – like the museums we visited on our field trips, learning how educators work with kids in informal settings across disciplines and areas. If other programs started blogs, we could link them together forming a valuble community for not only us educators, but also visitors who want to prolong their experiences and connect their visits to disparate museums. All this is in its infancy stages (or should I say chicken fetus stages), but its a really exciting dialouge to be having.

Finally, I want to say how proud it made me feel that the explainers, on our own, had continued the spirit of innovation that defines the special place we work at. We should give major kudos to Luigi for running with the initial idea and everyone else who is posting or visiting the blog. And if anyone out there reading this is involved in a museum educator community and want to talk about starting a blog or linking an existing blog and continuing this discussion, give us a e-mail or post.

On a related note, I found this article online and thought it was pretty neat to get a little more information about what exactly this blogosphere is anyhow…

Scrubbing water clean

by Luigi Anzivino

Once a year, the field trip explainers get to go on a field trip! When the Exploratorium hosts its yearly Awards dinners, there are two days in which field trips are canceled. Therefore, we can afford to cover the museum with only half the floor staff. One half of us goes field tripping on day one, and the other on day two. On day two, five of us brave explainers went on a tour of the Wastewater Treatment Plant of San Francisco at Oceanside.

Completed in 1993, the Oceanside Plant is the City’s newest treatment facility. It is located off the Great Highway near the San Francisco Zoo. The Oceanside Plant treats an average dry weather flow of about 17 million gallons a day and has a total capacity of 65 million gallons during wet weather. It treats wastewater from the west side of the City. Cleaned water is discharged from the plant to the Pacific Ocean through the Southwest Ocean Outfall.

This is how they do it. It was a bit smelly, let me tell you, but very interesting. Here are some pictures.

Prom in Paris

by akikoakiko

I went in today, thinking I’d have a chill evening as a Receptionist- I even brought the magazine from Japan that I’d been saving – but was asked to be an Explainer instead, due to lack of staff.

 Never fear, the Explainers are here: May and Akiko! 

 So May and I spent the evening frolicking shamelessly among the promsters. 

 We danced.  We danced some more.  We posed a little.  Okay, we posed a lot.  We ate some food (including a spectacular chocolate fountain fondue).   We worked, too.  Really hard.

“Explainers, what’s your 20?“

“We’re in Paris.“

May got a cute hat while she was there.   Akiko was the Prom Queen.

 For the complete evening, click here! 

Save the chickens!

by Luigi Anzivino

Four-day old embryo, hosted on flickr

Someone commented on the photo above that I took, and in looking through her photostream, I saw a similar photo that she he took, with the following description:

i found this at the exploratorium in san francisco. at first i found this a little interesting. . . quickly after i realized that these poor baby chickens had their shells removed. they were then placed in a petri dish. four of them, at different stages of development and in different dishes, are then placed under a plastic table to be viewed under a sliding magnifying glass and bright lights. the chickens are no longer displayed after seven days of development.

i tried to find out what happens to the chickens after those seven days. the best answer that i have recieved so far is that they are thrown away.

while this may have (had) some scientific puposes i do not think that it is required among all the other displays. kids are there playing with magnets and water cyclones whilst possibly over 200 chickens a year have their eggs opened and are on display until they are thrown away.

i feel that this is a rather frivolous use of life. and it made me, and those i was with, very sad!

Now, I’ve been thinking about this, and something about it bothers me, although I can’t quite voice what it is. I mean, I don’t have a problem with the exhibit at all, really: you can buy fertilized eggs in any supermarket nowadays, and those are all potential little chickens that we choose to eat instead. I believe there is more value in using them for an exhibit such as this that, along with others like Energy from Death, confronts people (especially children) with the cycle of death and life, where things come from, the fact that things we eat were once alive, etc. And also it is really powerful and dramatic to be able to see how drastically an embryo can change in just four days of gestation, going from barely a speck of blood to something with a beating heart in it. I will occasionally still stop at the exhibit and just stare and marvel at the perfection and delicacy (no pun intended, maybe frailty is a better word here…) of the whole process.

Yet, I can see where she’s he’s coming from. It is a very normal sentiment to have, I think. So here’s a question for my fellow explainers and anyone else who cares to comment: where do you stand on this? And, how would you respond to the claim that this exhibit is a “rather frivolous use of life”? It would be interesting to generate ideas and debate points, because I have a feeling that many visitors share the same feelings, and it would be helpful to have some “talking points” ready in your head.

Everything in the Universe

by ryan

I’m geared up for the third installment of Paul D’s everything in the universe training.

I remembered this Monty Python song and video and thought it was pretty entertaining…

Galaxy Song

Running Diary of Event Reception

by ryan

Preface – This is a story about what happens when an explainer takes off the orange vest an enters into the exciting world of event reception. Behind the front desk I will have plenty of time for self-reflection, incoherent muttering, and possibly the chance to give someone directions to the best place to take pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge! Fun Fun Fun.

6:12 PM – The event starts in 45 minutes. The explainers have had a rough time so far with twenty minutes of hacky sack followed by an intense half hour of crossword puzzling. And now thanks to the ninja pizza man we can eat! Seriously…the dude appeared out of nowhere…definitely a ninja! Crazy.
Speaking of ninjas this is an awesome website…Real Ultimate Power

6:31 PM – One of the best things about working the front desk is that you get to root around in the lost and found and claim things that you want. In two weeks I’m gonna score a Spongebob Squarepants hat if nobody claims it. It’s gonna be sick! Also I’m thinking about snagging a Power Rangers backpack, but its kinda dirty. Oh well.

7:21 PM – The guests arrived 20 minutes ago and Luigi reports that they are a good crowd. No funny phone calls yet. I’m a little disappointed so far.

8:18 PM – We have a man with kilt in the building. Someone just came in the office and stuck their nose in the lilacs. A woman walked in looking for the place, “where the events are”, and a man left a special note for Dennis.

9:01 – Luigi and I just had an epic bubble making duel while I was on my break. The crowds were astonished as I made a totally huge bubble. Then Luigi made a enormusly gigantic bubble. But in the end I made the biggest bubble of all and won the contest causing the crowd to break into a hearty ovation while Luigi slunk away and cried like a little girl.

9:14 – Marcus is not happy with Dove Chocolates. First they instruct him to ‘decorate his life’. Then they contradict themselves and say, ‘don’t worry about it’. Which is it Dove Chocolate?…Which is it?

9:39 – The event is winding down. The visitors are starting to file out. I’m not getting too many more phone calls except from people looking for sex advice.

10:01 – This will be my last post of the evening. As Chick Hearn used to say…this event is in the refrigerator, the door is closed, the lights are out, the eggs are cooling, the butter’s getting hard and the jellos jiggling. Now comes the take down for May, Marcus, and Luigi while I (the receptionist) continue to chill in the office. Luigi ranked this event a 15 out of 17 and I’m gonna add two more points for the first ever event blog reception diary making it a perfect score. Time to go.

by akikoakiko

Ryan inspired me with that fantastic article,  so here’s an article that Sam and I were talking about a week and a half ago – he recently visited this aquarium (he’s from GA) and said that it truly was amazing.  But this makes me wonder about where to draw the line – of course we want the best, but this starts treading on some ethical issues. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/weekinreview/08dewan.html?_r=1&ref=weekinreview&oref=slogin

On the way to work…

by ryan

I feel like I often read articles online or in the paper and then try to tell people about them, which is ultimately disappointing because I’ve made a lame summary or forgot the main point or some other stupid reason. So I want to start posting some links to cool articles that I’ve encountered.

This morning I read this online and it really made me think about our jobs, and what we are trying to get people to do and notice everyday.

Here’s the link…