I enjoyed reading Chapter 9 of Surrounded by Science mainly because I could easily relate to the variety of ways informal science was being spread. I’ve been constantly learning about science through both informal and formal experiences all my life, so I was pretty much agreeing with almost everything in this chapter. The cute little paragraph about fish and the ocean in the beginning of the chapter caught my attention and made me want to continue reading the chapter (a perfect example of Strand 1). I thought it was great how the Liberty Science Center was using cell phones to teach the museum visitor population about the exhibits they saw. Cell phones are being looked down upon recently because they limit social interaction since most people tend to be attached to their cell phones like it’s their second appendix. However, it was reassuring to read that cell phones are also being used for educational and interactive purposes. It made me think of the iNaturalist app we were told to download during the BioBlitz, and how the fact that nearly everyone had an iPhone turned out to be pretty useful!
After reading about the Mystery of the X-Fish story, I automatically thought about our visit to the Poison exhibit at the the Museum of Natural History. After watching a presentation about the story of a man who committed a crime by poisoning another man (I think it might have been his enemy), we were told to move further into the exhibit and look at different scenarios where something had happened and it was our job to figure out what item was responsible for the crime. It was the same exact thing as the X-fish exhibit because both exhibits required solving different problems through observations as well as making educated guesses based on those observations to effectively solve the mystery at hand. I think that’s an excellent way to learn because you’re not only taking in information from the environment, you’re also making your own rational decisions based on what you observed and learning how to think in situations where you need to work out a way to solve a given problem.
