FLAT EARTH, ROUND EARTH: TWO NEW VISUALIZATION SYSTEMS FOR FORMAL AND INFORMAL GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION

One of the more significant challenges in visualizing geoscience data is to manipulate and display arbitrarily large raster imagery in a proper map projection. The university of Minnesota, The National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design are developing applications, visualizations and curriculum to support undergraduate laboratory classes at the Science Museum of Minnesota. This new model for formal/informal educational collaboration will the prototyped and tested at SMM and then and integrated into ‘Water Planet', a 5000 square foot traveling SMM exhibition that opens at the Museum in fall 2008 and begins a national tour in fall 2009. One of these software applications, Magic Carpet, is a visualization application that can display georeferenced raster imagery of any size on single monitors or large tiled displays. This application provides the ability to interactively mix and match raster data of any resolution, from any source. It also provides a platform for other applications that use topographic or remote-sensing data. On a second front, visualizations are being developed for the ‘Science on a Sphere' (SoS) spherical display system developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The SoS is best used for global-scale, time-dependant visualizations. Visualizations have been developed for geodynamics, oceanography, climate change, and earth-surface dynamics. Initial testing on museum visitors and university classes is very positive. Students were enthusiastic about using the SoS system and museum visitors tend to spend more time with the SoS display than they do with most other museum exhibits. Magic Carpet will be demonstrated live, while the Science on a Sphere project will be shown by video.