Homepage ... 2000-2005 Column Index ... 1995-1999 Column Index

Article for: The Davis Enterprise
Date: April 4, 2003
Author: Mackenzie Tysell
Contact: Tom Wickersham

BRING A PICNIC TO EXPLORIT ON "WRITTEN IN STONE'S" LAST DAY

Looking for a recipe for fun? Try the combination of packing a picnic plus visiting Explorit tomorrow to explore the exhibition and meet a scientist. This will be no ordinary picnic. This picnic will help you learn about the wonders of the earth and get you in the mood for the last day of Explorit's exhibition "Written in Stone: The Story of Sand, Soil and Rocks." You might be surprised to find out just how much food and rocks have in common. The following are some suggestions for what to include in your picnic basket.

Picnic Item #1: Sedimentary Sandwiches
Make sandwiches while learning about forces shaping the earth. Prepare each sandwich in layers, just as layers of sediment are deposited upon the earth. Find as many different ingredients as possible; even add two different kinds of bread to better distinguish layers. The fun begins after the sandwich is made, but before it's eaten. Try pushing the edges of the sandwich inward, so that the sandwich folds upward like mountains. Your hands are like pressure-causing tectonic plates. What would happen to the sandwich if your hands caused an earthquake?

Try these exhibits: At the "Making Mountains", "Bed Spread", and "Faulty Engineering" exhibits, you can simulate crumpling and folding rock, forming new crust with magma, and causing an earthquake to tumble a building.

Picnic Item #2: Fruit Core Galore
Snack on fruit while you create a model of the earth. Slice several kinds of fruit in half-peaches, apples, apricots, grapes, pears, plums, and oranges are good choices. Before you dig in, examine the fruit and determine which kind most resembles the interior of the earth. Which one has parts that look like a core, a mantle and a crust?

Try these exhibits: At the "Drilling for Data" exhibit, you can use a straw to drill a hole in clay to see how the layers were deposited. At "Layers upon Layers", you can color and label a cross section of the earth.

Picnic Item #3: Metamorphic Munchies
Bake some cookies to sweeten the meal and in the process learn how rocks change under heat and pressure. Your cookie dough will be like a sedimentary rock with many types of ingredients. You can even use various sifters or colanders to sort the sediment sizes of the flour, sugar, oatmeal and so on. What changes take place as you use pressure to mix the dough and heat to bake it to sweet perfection?

Try these exhibits: At the "Rock Cycle" and "Heat Is On" exhibits, you can compare sedimentary and metamorphic rocks as well as apply pressure to simulate heating and changing rocks.

Hopefully you won't stuff yourself with the delectable picnic fare causing yourself to erupt! We wouldn't want you to miss out on the fun that Explorit has to offer on the final day of this exhibition. In addition to the exhibition, Andrew Engilis, curator of the UC Davis Wildlife Museum will be on hand from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. to talk about what a curator does and to share specimens from the museum collection. This presentation is free with paid admission.

At Explorit you can find all of the ingredients for a great day of science exploration. Enjoy the picnic benches in the backyard area, excavate in the sand pit, experiment at the dozens of geology exhibits in the gallery, and observe fascinating animal specimens at the special presentation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Explorit Science Center is at 3141 5th Street in East Davis. The current exhibition is "Written in Stone: The Story of Sand, Soil and Rocks," which ends Apr. 5. Public hours Saturday are 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Explorit will be closed between Apr. 6 - 11 changing exhibitions. "What's the Buzz? Insects around Us" opens Apr. 12 and runs through Jun. 8. For more information, visit www.explorit.org or call Explorit at (530) 756-0191.