To kick off this year's Cambridge Science Festival, Under the Dome, MIT was a day-long, campus-wide open house intended to share the richness of MIT's scientific and cultural life with the public.
Members of PAOC who participated included students, faculty, researchers and staff from several PAOC constituencies including The Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, the Synoptic and Fluid Labs and the Geobiology/ Astrobiology Group.
"Confronting the Climate Change Challenge" involved a number of family friendly hands-on activities and demonstrations to help visualize the current state of climate knowledge and what Earth may look like when MIT is 300 years old. Students and researchers with a wide range of expertise were on hand throughout the day to answer questions and discuss global climate issues. In addition to videos and other interpretive displays, popular activities included taking a "spin" on the "Greenhouse Gamble" wheel - a roulette-style wheel designed to demonstrate the liklihood of potential global temperature change in 2100 and getting fingers wet in the "Weather-in-a-tank"-tank, exploring the "ingredients" of weather and ocean circulation.
"A Walk Through Time - 4.6 Billion Years of Earth History" was a delightful 240, 000 years an inch guided walk along the Charles, charting the many incredible events that have occurred in Earth's 4.567 billion year history.