GEOLOGY AS A DETECTIVE STORY; EXPOSING THE “MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN” IN EARTH SCIENCE EXHIBITS

The Museum of Northern Arizona is in the preliminary planning stages for a major expansion of its public exhibit areas. As a member of the planning committee for the new geology hall I have advocated organizing the exhibit to emphasize that science is not a thing apart, but is of a piece with other human activities. Several approaches are under consideration, including using “Geology as a Detective Story” as one organizing theme. The emphasis would be on allowing museum visitors to pull up information at will using advanced technology (icons on touch screens, or a museum app downloaded onto a smart phone), and attempt to assemble the clues used to interpret a particular item on display. “At the Crime Scene” might include hunting for fossils, and establishing sequence of events. “The Autopsy Table” would allow the dissection of planet Earth using gravity, seismic and magnetic data, and logs from mines and boreholes. “The Crime Lab” might allow visitors to pull up images of thin-sections or microfossils, geochemical analyses or radiometric dates. “Crime Reconstruction” would put flesh back onto fossil bones, cause ancient environments to spring to life, mountains to rise and erode away, or plates and climatic belts to shift. This represents a “bottom up” approach to earth system science, where our visitors would be allowed to make their own connections among ideas and data sets. I will use selected examples from the geology of the Colorado Plateau to illustrate this approach.