Join Deep Earth Academy at the USA Science and Engineering Festival
Filed under: DEA,News & Resources,Understanding
Washington, DC – During the weekend of October 23-24, approximately 250,000 people are expected to descend on the National Mall in the name of science. What’s drawing the crowds? Interviews with Nobel Laureates, discussions with actors and writers from popular TV shows such as NCIS and CSI, and the opportunity to explore every science discipline imaginable through hands-on exhibits – all for free.
The event is the inaugural USA Science and Engineering Festival. It is the country’s first national science festival and is designed to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.
The Festival began October 10 and its culminating event is the Expo on the Mall this coming weekend. More than 750 hands-on, interactive exhibits spanning aerospace, green energy, medicine, biotechnology, climatology, robotics, nanotechnology, earth science, botany, neuroscience, genetics, and many other scientific disciplines will be featured on the Mall.
Deep Earth Academy, the U.S. education program for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), will have an exhibit on the Mall as part of the event. Titled “Core Discoveries Beneath the Sea,” the exhibit will introduce visitors to how deep sea sediment samples are used to understand Earth’s history – specifically, the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other organisms 65 million years ago.
“The extinction of the dinosaurs is a great way to draw people into science,” said Jen Collins, coordinator of Deep Earth Academy’s booth presence at the festival. She continued, “At our booth, visitors will use scientific observation to investigate patterns recorded in deep sea cores. They will also see how those patterns provide important evidence that a meteor struck the Earth and caused significant changes in both land- and water-based ecosystems. Our exhibit shows connections between data collected at sea to events that occurred on land – it’s a great way to show the interdisciplinary nature of earth science.”
Ocean Leadership staff and scientists from the scientific research vessel JOIDES Resolution will be available at the booth throughout the weekend to share their experiences and stories about working at sea and to answer questions about different career paths in earth science.
“We are thrilled to be part of this event and hope that after the experience, visitors will follow our current and upcoming IODP expeditions online – and maybe some of our visitors will even decide to become oceanographers,” remarked Leslie Peart, Director of Deep Earth Academy.
The USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo is free and open to the public. Exhibits will be open October 23 and 24 from 10:00am – 5:30 pm. Deep Earth Academy’s booth will be #311 on 4th Street.
Deep Earth Academy is funded through both U.S. Implementing Organization (USIO) and the U.S. Science Support Program, the latter of which supports the involvement of the U.S. scientific community in IODP. Both USIO and USSSP are funded by the National Science Foundation.
For more information on the festival, visit http://www.usasciencefestival.org/. For more information about Deep Earth Academy, visit http://www.joidesresolution.org.
