Summer 2011

Sustainable Choices

Sustainable Choices interactive exhibit June 11 - August 14, 2011

Sustainable Choices is an interactive exhibit focusing on sustainability with topics each of us considers every day as consumers. How does the way in which you care for your lawn impact the air you breathe or the water that drains into the soil? Examine the shirt you're wearing. What resources were used to create that shirt and transport it to the store where you purchased it? What are the environmental trade-offs for the foods you eat? By focusing on decisions made every day, visitors are encouraged to examine their lifestyle choices and what those choices may mean for future generations.

Sustainable Choices highlights that the goal of sustainability is to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This is an increasingly important topic as the world's population and consumption expand. Visitors will explore themes of electricity, water, transportation, shopping and landscaping. Hands-on activities challenge visitors to:

Sort objects to determine which are trash and which are recyclable
Compare water usage in the creation of your favorite foods, beverages, and household items.
Pedal Power: What is energy and how do we use it?
Quiz Board: How much water goes down the drain?
What does THAT mean? Decipher those labels: free range, organic, etc.

Sustainable Choices is organized by NRG! Exhibits.

Climate Science

Images of smoke stacks at the Climate Science exhibit June 11 - August 14, 2011

Explore concepts of climate change with hands-on activities from the Gateway Science Museum's Climate Science exhibit. Come learn how scientists study climate, the research methods they use, and how the data is interpreted. Hands-on activities include an Antarctic food web game, testing the reflectivity of surfaces, and examining models of rock and sediment cores to discover what life was like during specific time periods.

The world map with distributed smoke stacks around the map

Double Exposure

Double Exposure Logo

June 25 - August 14, 2011

Explore how global warming is affecting our planet. Double Exposure documents one aspect of the warming climate through fine-art photography that brings the viewer into panoramas of glaciers once grand but currently changing. For example, visitors will compare photographs of the Matterhorn taken in 1960 and in 2005 to examine how changing weather has impacted the levels of snow and ice on the glacier.

The exhibit features twin photographs of glaciers in Alaska and Switzerland. Legendary mountaineer Bradford Washburn took the original pictures in the early and mid-1990s. Writer/photographer David Arnold took the modern images between 2005 and 2007 from the same aerial vantage points first used by Washburn.

Matterhorn Photographs