Kolkata's Science City brings planet Earth to life
12 Dec 2008
The first dedicated "earth building" in the world, located at Kolkata's Science City, opened on Tuesday, 9 December 2008, after having been inaugurated by union tourism and culture minister Ambika Soni on 6 December.
Named Earth Hall, the building has been developed by the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), to enable people to comprehend the physical impact on their lives of the growing global warming and climate change, and realise that the earth has become extremely vulnerable today.
The new two-storey gallery on the earth's biodiversity, aptly named the Earth Exploration Hall, houses a 25m-diameter hemispherical dome with a 6m-diameter globe at its centre where visitors can undertake an interactive journey to the origin of the earth, see its geology and experience the effects of tornadoes and earthquakes.
The exhibits allow visitors to create the effects of a tornado in a huge glass capsule, see how tectonic plates move in the Atlantic Ocean, and experience the atmospheric pressure at various altitudes from 10 metre below sea level to the top of Mt Everest or flying in a normal commercial aircraft at 33,000 feet.
A collaborative effort of NCSM's centres in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Bangalore, this project is intended to educate the masses about earth issues. The project, costing Rs2.6 crore, funded entirely by Science City, Kolkata was built over 15 months.
The gallery is divided into 30-degree segments corresponding to the Earth's latitude. The unique gallery includes models like a 3D world map on a table that can be scrolled by tilting the table and rotating screens that display images.
Each segment enumerates the geological phenomena, culture, flora and fauna of the region. For instance, videos from the Northern Hemisphere near the pole include an Inuit building an igloo, deep-sea volcanoes and underwater life of the region.
Different countries are portrayed on globes that play the national anthem of the country when touched or play a recording of a line in the national language, along with models that simulate tornado, earthquake and the Coriolis force explaining the movement of winds, are intended to give visitors a feel of various natural phenomenon and facets of life on the planet.
A number of specialised galleries are planned over the next five years within the campus. Concrete plans to develop three galleries devoted to emerging technologies, including nanotechnology, biotechnology, microelectronics and one dedicated to Indian heritage in science and technology are underway.
