EXPLORIT Science Center - Weekly Column

This year Explorit experienced an unprecedented demand for their Summer Science Classes. Many classes, especially at the 1-2 grade level, filled within the first couple of days after they started accepting reservations.

An additional section of "Fun, Friendly, Fantastic Physics" will run June 19-23. Girls and boys will delight in fascinating physics experiments. Young scientists curious about why things happen the way they do will enjoy this class.

Students in "Can You Dig It?"will become junior geologists and look for clues about how Earth works. From rugged rocks to exciting earthquakes, participants will get the scoop on what's happening in "the world beneath our feet." The new section of this class is August 14-18.

Registration for these sections has been open to Explorit members and will be opening to the general public starting at 9 a.m. on Monday, June 5.

Explorit's summer classes run from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The cost is $70 for members and $95 for non-members. Unlike the original suite of summer classes, the "Afternoon Science Club" will not be available these two weeks.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birthday of early geologist James Hutton. Hutton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1726. Although he was trained in medicine, Hutton soon turned to agriculture. Through his observations of the rocks beneath and around the soil he tilled, Hutton entered into the ripe discussion of geologic time and formation.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hutton discarded Neptunian catastrophism (that is, that the rocks at Earth's surface had precipitated out of the waters of Noah's Flood). Many catastrophists were very worried about the future of the continents; land was clearly being removed by wind and water, but their theory did not allow for any new land to be formed. Hutton also saw that the continents were eroding, but he postulated that the resulting sediment would stack up in immense layers once it reached the oceans, and would become new rock (what we would call "sedimentary" rock), and then eventually become new land.

This is one example of Hutton's revolutionary hypotheses. Hutton published his ideas, including cyclical geologic processes driven by Earth's internal heat and his ideas about what we now recognize as the three basic rock types, in the two volume Theory of the Earth in 1795. For this, Hutton is often referred to as "the father of modern geology."

Do you shop at Nugget Market? If so, save your receipts and take them to Explorit! Nugget Markets will donate to Explorit 1% of the total of all receipts dated through June 15. Any purchases paid for with cash, check, or ATM card are eligible.

Explorit Science Center is located at 3141 5th Street in East Davis. The current exhibition is Gee Whiz Geometry: Patterns in Our World. Public hours are Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Sunday from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m., and Tuesday through Friday from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m. Regular admission is $3; members, teachers (with school ID) and children under 4 are free.

Explorit Science Center Weekly Column