The California Academy of Sciences museum based in beautiful San Francisco, California is the oldest and one of the largest natural history museums in the world. Our family visited its impressive premises a weekend ago. The museum is a family-friendly tourist spot that would inform and broaden the horizons of anyone interested in our origins and our place in the Universe.
Serving as a public face to the active research body, the Academy of Science, the museum houses impressive displays including an aquarium, an indoor rainforest, a planetarium, an earthquake simulator, and several sections dedicated to accentuating our planet’s terrains.
One of the characteristics of this museum is its captivating appearance with three mounds on its ceiling visible from tall surrounding buildings. Situated close to Chinatown, the museum building was completely rebuilt in 2008 by famed designer Renzo Piano. A closer look from an astute observer would reveal its sustainable and environment-friendly cause. Documentaries from the Discovery and the National Geographic Channel. The museum has won numerous awards for its eco-friendly design and advanced capabilities like recycling rainwater for irrigation, water conservation, use of natural lighting, and use of photoelectric cells for electricity.
One of the most breathtaking exhibits of the museum can be found in the Steinhart Aquarium. The aquarium provides bird’s eye views of several of the world’s underwater ecosystems, christened the Twilight zone, for their enigmatic nature. Exhibits range from Northern California’s shark-infested waters to water bodies in rainforests to the coral reefs of Australia.
Giant aquariums of bright hues invite even a passive observer to take a deeper look. An albino alligator, colorful seahorses, octopi, and colorful fish add to the aquarium’s magnificence.
The San Andreas fault that covers 800 miles of California forms a boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates and makes the state most vulnerable to earthquakes. An exhibit at the museum serves to bring more awareness to this natural disaster with a powerful simulation and has exhibits offering tips to prepare for one. This exhibit has special significance to the Cal Academy. The older museum buildings were adversely damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. The reconstruction of the museum was done with a solid focus to mitigate the impact of seismic activity.
Numerous exhibits are dedicated to another fascinating field of Science which fights to stay in the forefront with threats not from Science but from religious extremism. This is the study of evolution. Fossils of dinosaurs, ancestors of humanity, and extinct flora and fauna tell the tale of the earth’s past and its earliest life forms. Another exhibit depicts marsupials and flightless birds unique to Australia, as a testimony to the power of evolution when confined to a single continent for several millennia.
My young son, who considers himself a treasure hunter, was mesmerized by the museum’s geological exhibits. These include colorful rocks and minerals, volcanic rocks and a giant meteorite.
A magnificent 90 foot glass dome with a spiral staircase that showcases the splendor of the earth’s rainforests is yet another highlight of this museum.
Finally, the museum also includes the largest digital planetarium with a diameter of 90 feet. Unfortunately, our family was not impressed with its rather short and plain vanilla show. However, the rest of the museum more than made up for this inadequacy.
Recent political turmoil and an anti-science climate now threaten education, our environment and the very existence of our planet. This museum is a shining beacon of light that brings hope in these dark times. Lines of humanity stretched into some of the side streets of the museum. To me this was an encouraging sign that so many of us care about our planet and all the natural wonder it has to offer.
References
Bay Area Bloke 