Above you can see some of us standing at the entrance to the prehistoric section of the North Carolina museum of Natural Science. Within the the exhibit, we were able to observe a meteorite that was 4.5 billion years old. This meteorite fragment crashed into North Carolina in 1936. It was truly amazing to see how scientists were able to use carbon dating to discover the age of the ancient rock. It made me consider the vastness of space and just how short our life span is in the grand scheme of things. This one rock was older than the dinosaurs, and we had the privilege of touching it. A conclusion I have come to is that it is very easy for humans to be isolated and narrow minded about life. “The world revolves around me”. However, just by looking at nature, we can see that life happens all around us and we are just a speck in the window of time. As a bonus, we learned a snapping turtle can have a bite force of 209 newtons. We looked up the fact out of curiosity after being able to get up close and personal with a North Carolina Snapping Turtle. This also goes to show that things in nature are all created in unique ways that cannot be seen by just the naked eye. One would not expect a small animal like that to be able to bite off a finger. I hope in the future that we are able to delve deeper into ancient natural history and continue to gain perspective on how much has happened before we even existed.
Above is a picture of Ryan, Koen, and I posing in a WWII picture. In this exhibit we got to see the kinds of uniforms, food, and weapons used by soldiers. Also, we got to experience unique interactive story telling simulations to learn more about the life of a soldier
Above is a picture of the four of us at the science museum. We walked throughout all 3 stories of the building and learned about space, dinosaurs, and different environments. One of the most fascinating things we saw was a 4.5 billion year old rock. Through this experience, I learned the power of science and how it helps us determine our history.