Event 1

LAWRENCE HALL OF SCIENCE (UC Berkeley)

     Last week, I visited the Lawrence Hall of Science. My first reaction to this place was that it was geared more for kids than adults because paper airplanes were flying all over the place. However, before I knew it, I was enjoying all of the interactive activities as much as the young children. I found myself stopping at all of the activities because they were too inviting to pass up. The first stop was the Fold and Fly exhibit in the lobby. This paper airplane station gave you the choice of making one of your own designs or following the directions for a pre-existing design. The directions were clear and concise and I was amazed how far my plane went just by changing the way the nose was folded. Science on a Sphere was my favorite exhibit. This is a huge globe that displays illuminated mesmerizing images of the atmosphere, oceans, and land. This unique globe was designed to study environmental data such as extreme weather conditions and climate change. It gives you the opportunity to explore the Earth and observe how the planet works. This was a great example of how art and science are connected.

     The 3-D theater was nice except the seats were a little small. I saw a documentary called “Tiny Giants”, which was a story about two tiny creatures, a mouse and a chipmunk trying to survive in the wildlife. The chipmunk is trying to store up enough nuts for winter and the mouse is venturing out into the wild for the first time. The visual effects were amazing because I felt as if I was immersed into the film. The photography was so sharp that it brought these small animals to life and allowed me to learn about the animal kingdom close up. The film definitely gave the perspective of seeing things from an animal’s point of view by the way the filming is shot to make the audience feel small enough to journey through an animal’s burrow. There was a lot of slow motion footage that allowed the audience to see the details of fast moving animals. The dramatic sound effects added to the films charm. As for the music, I learned through an exhibit that mathematics plays a role in encoding the sound by using binary numbers to create a rhythm.

     The “Tiny Giants” documentary and the museum’s animation station allowed me to see first hand how math and art are connected. The animator needs to have a vast knowledge of geometry. Geometry is used when drawing the dimension and depth of the object in order for it to seem life-like. The characters and backgrounds are all made up of different sizes and shapes. The animator needs to know the properties of lines, surfaces, and solids to make their drawings well defined. Trigonometry is another key factor one would need to know because in order to make the characters move 180 degrees you need to understand trigonometry. Math and art is two separate entities, yet the collaboration between the two have created many beneficial technological advances for our world. Without math it couldn’t be possible to create 3-Dimensional images onto a 2-Dimensional surface.

     I have lived in the Bay Area my whole life and had never visited the Lawrence Hall of Science.  I would recommend it to anyone with kids. The Lawrence Hall of Science was named after Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who was the first Nobel Prize winner from the University of California. He earned this award for his invention of the cyclotron, which is still today the most powerful accelerator. He also became the youngest full professor at the University of California, Berkeley at the age of twenty-nine. I have posted below a photo of the telegram Lawrence received to inform him of his Nobel Prize. This intrigued me because I had never seen an original telegram. It’s hard to imagine, especially in todays world, that this was the means in which how important information was communicated.

Sources

Burk, Phil, Larry Polansky, Douglas Repetto, Mary Roberts, and Dan Rockmore. "Music and Computers." Music and Computers. Columbia University, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

"The Geometry of Perspective Drawing on the Computer." Mathematics of Perspective Drawing. Web. 5 July 2016. <http://www.math.utah.edu/~treiberg/Perspect/Perspect.htm>.

"Mathematics and Art." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 5 July 2016.