Earth sciences child’s play at ROM exhibition — Geology, palaeobiology no longer domain of stuffy old academics

At the new Dynamic Earth exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in downtown Toronto, kids rule.

Gone are the dry, academic presentations of the earth’s geologic evolution and carefully ordered and boxed specimens. Instead, visitors to the permanent $4.25-million exhibit will be guided through the Earth’s turbulent history by two cartoon characters, numerous multi-media presentations and more than a few fossilized critters.

Although the official title of the exhibition — “Dynamic Earth: Inco Limited Gallery of Earth Sciences” — indicates a decidedly geologic bent, the ROM’s department of palaeobiology also contributed to the exhibit. Seems that debate still rages, in academic circles at least, as to which had a greater hand in shaping Earth as we know it — geologic forces or organic life.

The exhibit itself, the largest ever presented in the museum, is divided into three rooms — Earth: The Alien Planet; Restless Earth; and Treasures of the Earth.

Earth: The Alien Planet, in a room the colour of a Granny Smith Apple, is where the mascots of the exhibit, Algie and Trog, wage their debate as to whether biology or geology contributed more to the formation of terra firma. Algie, the lifeform, is a cross between Ronald McDonald and a puddle. Trog, the grumpy one, looks like something you would expect a thing named Trog to look like. Their story, from the collision of space debris to form the planets to the evolution of life, plays out in comic book form on a series of panels fastened to the wall.

Beneath each of these cartoon panels is a table (about 15 in all), on which sit various types of rocks, meteorites and fossils of increasingly evolved organisms — from microbes to trilobites to small winged dinosaurs. These are used to explain the evolution of the planet.

This section also contains a series of rooms — sponsored by heavyweights like Barrick Gold, Battle Mountain Gold, Edper Brascan and Placer Dome — that chart the usually violent development of the planet by means of murals made with fluorescent paint and ultraviolet light. A recorded narrator explains just what it is your looking at.

A complete circuit of The Alien Planet section reveals that Algie and Trog still haven’t resolved their differences of opinion, but at least they’re pals.

Beside The Alien Planet is a room called the Earth Theatre. Here, a space-aged projector twists on the ceiling to show a film called Earth in Motion. Visitors sit on a bench that rings the circular room to watch a film that uses images of volcanoes, lava flows, earthquakes, microbes and the ocean to explain how the Earth is in constant flux around us. It’s a nifty little film, but with the constantly moving picture, it’s a bit like trying to watch a TV that’s strapped to the back of a fly.

On to The Restless Earth, the centrepiece of which is the Falconbridge-sponsored Volcano Theatre. The theatre is in the guise of, well, a volcano, but one you can actually sit in without getting lava in your pants. The film inside, Restless Earth, is projected on to the ground. The kids inside had a blast jumping up and down on images of lava, earthquakes and Japan. Outside, a small group of boys peered up at the volcano, as Edmund Hillary once did at Mt. Everest.

Restless Earth is the place that provides concise answers to such age-old stumpers as: Can lava move faster than you? (thankfully, no); What’s wet and moves masses of rubble? (a river); What do glaciers have to do with Ontario? (no MNDM jokes, please); Countdown to disaster? (eventually, but it stresses that that’s for other generations to worry about).

This section also featured most of the “low-tech” exhibits. These were popular. Kids learned about plate tectonics by pushing an oversized handle to mash together thin layers of foam rubber representing the Earth’s crust. The tectonic displacement station was the same sort of thing, but with a rope. If learning is in any way related to acts of physical strength, these kids are now geniuses.

In a tall glass container encrusted with a coating to make it more rock-like, air bubbles blurbed upwards through ‘lava’ when a plunger resembling a bicycle pump was pushed. The disappointment of the children gathered around the station was audible when they were informed that the red gel in the tube was, in fact, not really lava.

Over in the earthquakes section, Inmet sponsored a station depicting an actual earthquake, albeit an undramatic one: a chunk of faux asphalt replete with yellow highway stripes shook a little at the touch of a button.

The Primordial Earth room, sponsored by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, was another UV room. Inside, an angry red glow depicted the Earth as it looked 4 billion years ago: lots of volcanoes spewing chemicals into the atmosphere, few accountants.

As far as the kids are concerned, The Alien Planet and Restless Earth are the places to be. The third and final room in the exhibit, Treasures of the Earth, is the Moms and Dads Room.

A brightly lit promenade features several large glass cases holding mineral specimens grouped according to their formation: Chilling Out; In and Out of Hot Water; Under Stress; and Changing Identity. Donated, collected and purchased, the specimens in these cases number in the hundreds.

Along the walls of the promenade are activity stations, the themes of which appeared to be lost on most of the kids in attendance. The Mix and Match station is a button pusher’s dream come true, though attaching adjectives such as “dendritic,” “acicular” and “botryodial” to their respective mineral specimens evidently isn’t little Johnny’s idea of a good time. Ditto the detailed Mineral Classification station sponsored by Cominco, an inorganic chemistry student’s nightmare behind glass.

These exhibits, as informative as they are, are no match for the gee-whizzery inspired by the S.R. Perren Gem and Gold Room. Although the room was opened in 1993, it is now considered one of the showpieces of the exhibit. The room, practically a jeweler’s vault, features raw and sculpted gems from topaz and zircon to diamonds and other precious stones. The Errington Diamond was as big as a dollar coin at 63.65 carats. An intricate diamond necklace weighed in at 37 carats. A blue diamond ring was described as weighing almost 6 carats.

The gold section of the room hosted at least 70 generously sized samples, most of which appeared as they did when hauled out of the ground.

Ultimately, the message of Dynamic Earth is that the minerals and metals that took so long to form deep in the violent earth are now all about us and used every day, even in the most mundane ways. This is evident in the exhibit’s functional washrooms, which feature galleries of boxed mineral specimens and brief descriptions of how they are important to the most underappreciated room in the house.

Hematite, gypsum and chalcopyrite samples adorn the wall near the door. And as if to close the book on the inescapability of minerals in modern life, the tag on the feldspar sample above the throne lets you know where porcelain comes from.