PLANETARY PICKS: A CLOSER LOOK AT MARS—PUBLIC OUTREACH AT THE PACIFIC MUSEUM OF EARTH, VANCOUVER

We present a recent addition to our public outreach menu: Planetary Picks: A closer look at Mars. This hands-on workshop at the Pacific Museum of Earth (PME) takes students on a tour through some of the most exciting features on Mars. The PME, located at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, is a small Earth Science museum that boasts a growing outreach program. We run ~120 programs annually, catering to nearly 1600 K-12 students. The goal of this workshop is to engage the younger generation in a discussion about planetary science—in particular we aim to highlight the major physical characteristics of Mars, demonstrate the process of crater formation, identify similarities and differences between structures found on Earth and Mars, as well as illustrate the difference in gravity between Earth and Mars.

Planetary Picks: A closer look at Mars includes an introductory talk by one of our educational leaders, followed by three hands-on activities aimed at addressing the workshop goals. During Crater Creator, students use a tray of Play-Doh (i.e. analog Martian surface) and a variety of different sized beach pebbles (i.e. analog asteroids) to recreate cratering patterns seen in high-resolution images of impact craters of Mars’s surface and to determine the relative age of the craters. Mars Memory presents students with a set of matching cards that show images of similar geologic features on both Earth and Mars. Students select similar Earth-Mars pairs from the cards. Once a match is made, students refer to an explanation sheet that outlines the type of structure and formation process by which the feature-pair formed. The final activity Gravity of Gravity lets students explore the difference between gravity on Mars and Earth. We use this demonstration to discuss why, for example, volcanoes can be much larger on Mars than on Earth.

In addition to these classroom-based activities, the workshop includes one of the PME’s newest exhibits—the OmniGlobe. Located in the Globe and Gem Gallery, this interactive display is the first and only of its kind in Canada. A touchscreen kiosk controls the content projected on the 1.5 m wide Globe allowing users to navigate through images and animations at the tap of a finger. We use the OmniGlobe to show students a 3D view of Mars: Mars with and without clouds as well as Mars’s magnetic field and topography.