The Smithsonian website offers
online materials, exhibitions, and research opportunities for adults and kids
who aren’t able to visit the Washington D.C. onsite locations. Some of the
exhibitions, even past exhibitions, are able to be accessed completely online;
complete with video tours, interactive games, and mountains of information. One
of their very interesting exhibits entitled “Dig it! The Secrets of the Soil!”
was on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History from July
18, 2008 through Jan 10, 2010 and is now available for viewing completely
online.[1] This
exhibit focuses on educating people about what soil is, its purpose, what makes
it interesting, and why it is important to us.
The exhibit begins by explaining
what soil is. It explains that, “Soil makes life, and life makes soils…soils
breathe”[2] A
quote by Wallace H. Fuller from Soils of
the Desert Southwest says, “A cloak of loose, soft material, held to the
earth’s hard surface by gravity, is all that lies between life and lifelessness.”[3]
The Smithsonian really paints a portrait of soil as being a living and
breathing thing, it mentions that soils are born, age, and are lost. Soil is
made up of air, water, minerals, and organic matter (both living and
non-living).[4]
The exhibit features information on how all of these components mix to create
different types of soil. It also features information on each type of soil from
different parts of the United States. The exhibit goes on to explain how
scientists make soil monoliths; “a monolith, or vertical slice from topsoil
down to the subsoil, preserves a soils colors and layered horizons in
position.”[5]
These monoliths act as tools to view how soil is created, changed, and settls
over time. One of the most important issues this exhibit covers is the
importance of soil in our lives by allowing a place for plants to grow that
feed us, filter pollution, and create oxygen for us to breath. Soils are
literally the foundations on which we build our lives. The exhibit ends by
offering suggestions on how farmers can reduce the risk of over farming their
soil and how plowing and fertilizing crops affects our environment.
To keep the exhibit fun and
interesting it offers many different interactive videos and games. One of the
most interesting sections of the exhibit features ‘soil recipes’. These
‘recipes’ are created using soil and other ‘ingredients’ like elements, plants,
bacteria, temperature, and climate changes. For example, the “New England Sandy
Surprise” (creating a forest of white ash, American breech, sugar maple, and
red spruce) would be ‘created’ by adding sand with iron and other elements,
evergreen trees such as spruce or fir, water, bacteria and fungi, and cold
winters & warm summers.[6] It
offers the ‘directions’ to, “simmer in a cool, humid climate of 3,000 years,
keep covered with vegetation, add water to the soil surface and let seep down.”[7]
This section also offers a video of two chefs who compete to create the most
creative soil concoction. It also features games on soil monoliths, state soil
facts, greenhouse gas calculator, and more-all conveniently available on the
‘media resources’ tab and printable educational resources under the ‘for
educators’ tab.
The Smithsonian website features
information on all of the scientists and researchers who had a part in making
this exhibit come to life. Dennis Whigam, Patrick Megonigal, and Melissa
McCormick of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Douglas Ming a
planetary scientist from NASA, and Laurel Hartley an ecologist from Michigan
State University just to name a few. The online exhibit doesn’t offer many
primary and secondary resources for their work other than consistently citing
their photos and quotes from novels. They do however offer related titles and
websites for further research and discovery. Smithsonian credits the exhibit to
NASA (who funded the project) and the site manager Siobhan Starrs and curator
Patrick Megonigal.
Overall the exhibit is extremely
effective at telling the history it is relating to the public, especially
children. Through its use of interactive games and videos, it engages the
audience and maintains a high level of interest. It makes the science and history
behind soil relatable to modern people as well imparting the importance of soil
protection for future generations. Online exhibitions allow history and science
to be presented to the masses on a scale never before seen in history. People
with internet connections can visit the Smithsonian website and get information
on a thousand different topics at their fingertips. It is an amazing resource
for adults and children to better understand their past, present, and future.
Work Cited:
Smithsonian. “Dig It! the Secrets of the Soil!” Accessed December
14, 2014.http://forces.si.edu/soils/.
Smithsonian. “Making a Soil Monolith.” Accessed December 14, 2014.http://forces.si.edu/soils/02_03_02.html.
Smithsonian. “Soil Recipe Book.” Accessed December 14, 2014.http://forces.si.edu/soils/swf/recipebook.html.
[1] “Dig
It! the Secrets of the Soil!,” Smithsonian, accessed December 14, 2014, http://forces.si.edu/soils/index.html.
[2] “What Is Soil?,” Smithsonian, accessed December 14, 2014, http://forces.si.edu/soils/02_01_00.html.
[3]
Ibid.
[4] Ibid., slide three.
[5] “Making a Soil Monolith,” Smithsonian, accessed December
14, 2014, http://forces.si.edu/soils/02_03_02.html.
[6] “Soil Recipe Book,” Smithsonian, accessed December 14,
2014, http://forces.si.edu/soils/swf/recipebook.html.
[7]
Ibid.
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