"Zero Waste: Is It Possible?" the TechTeens Ask!

California Academy TechTeens Kate, Victoria and Emma created this video project inspired by the "Habitat Earth" planetarium show. They asked our visitors whether they thought if was possible for humans to get to zero waste. Here's what they found out.

For more about San Francisco's Zero Waste initiative, see http://www.sfenvironment.org/zero-waste .

The TechTeens at the AAAS Family Science Days!

Check out this video documenting what the Cal Academy TechTeens did and experienced at the AAAS Family Science Days in March in San Jose, California.

Great work by the TechTeens Viz team!

Bioblitz Video

Mark and I, along with Robert and Madeleine, participated and documented an Academy-led Bioblitz on March 7th. We spent the day learning how to use iNaturalist and the importance of citizen science. We sorted through the footage to create a video summary of our day and what we did. Our goal was to create a light and fun video that captured the spirit of our day and the things we were able to see! 

Citizen Science: http://www.calacademy.org/citizen-science-0
iNaturalist: http://www.inaturalist.org

Our First Video: "Butterfly Flight through the Academy"

What we have been calling our "animal voice-over" video is finally done! This is our first video project that the Viz Team worked on together as a whole group. Here is the description of what our awesome video is about, steps in how we made it, and what we learned from this project.

What It's About

Our video is intended to give the viewer some basic facts about animals here in the Academy, including:

• origin of a couple of the butterflies in the rainforest exhibit
• the habitat of the giant sea bass
• some cool scientific facts about rays
• and some background about our mascot Claude, the albino alligator

Basic Plot: A nervous / curious butterfly escapes the rainforest exhibit to visit the giant sea bass in the aquarium, the rays in the tank by the planetarium, and Claude the albino alligator in the swamp while learning about the unique facts of each animal.

How We Made It

These are the ten steps we took to create this project:

1. brainstormed ideas on what the video will be about (settling on the idea of animal voice-overs)
2. chose what animals to do voice-overs of
3. split up into teams to research each animal and write a script
4. filmed footage of each animal
5. edited the footage using Adobe Premiere in our teams
6. put the separate clips together into one video
7. presented the first draft (very rough cut)
8. received feedback on the rough cut
9. changed some elements based on the feedback
10. TA-DAAAA!!! :D

What We Learned

Here are a couple of the many things we learned from making our voice-over video, and how we can improve for our upcoming projects:

• background information of some of the animals at the Academy
• how to use Adobe Premiere to edit video and other assets
• the creative design process (filming, adding music/voice overs, editing sequences, etc.)
• the amount of video we need before editing (a lot)
• the specific methods of filming (panning, tilting, zoom, rule of thirds)
• how to improve after getting feedback

• the importance of time management
• how to work in teams
• asset gathering
• Creative Commons (copyright policies)

We had a lot of fun in making this video together- I hope you enjoy it too! :)

And now, without further ado, "Butterfly Flight through the Academy."

Blog post prepared by Emma.

Mark's Ruble Coin

This coin is a 50 ruble coin and was made in 1992. This coin is significant to me because I am ethnically Russian. The gigapixel image reveals the wear and tear of 23 years. There are gaps between the inner part and outer part of the coin.

Noah's Darth Vader Minifig

This is a photo of a Darth Vader Lego Minifigure, taken in extremely high resolution using the Giga Macro microscope at the California Academy of Sciences. To upload it, I scaled down the size of the image to 600x626, but the original image was 9275x9680 (over 700 MB).

This minifigure is one of my brother's Lego toys that he likes to play with. I scanned it to bring home and show him how awesome his Lego Minifigures looked under a super high-powered microscope. We like to play with these Legos together, so I scanned this to represent our love of playing Legos.

This picture is a zoomed in image of the buttons on Darth Vader's armor, shown in the first image above in the center of the screen. I zoomed in on this to show that although the buttons look like a solid color when viewed normally, they are actually speckled with white parts when zoomed in.

Madeleine's Beloved Paintbrush

Paintbrush Tip

The paintbrush in this picture is a small width flat out that I carry around religiously in my backpack. 6/32" (0.1875") wide, this brush is used for filling small places and is often used with similarly sized detail brushes. The texture is extremely soft and silkily, working best with smoother paints such as oils or watercolors. This very tips of the brush fan out a bit from long use as also apparent with the plier marks from tightening the fiber holding ferrule. The wear and tear from it being loose in the backpack is apparent in every aspect of this picture.

However, this doesn't  show the extent of the bristle condition. Once we zoomed in the image even farther than this than the above a lot more became apparent to me.

 Many small pieces of dust had attached themselves to individual fibers. As with all brushes, residual paint colored the base. Looking at the line going straight down you can find traces of black paint stain from oil paint, burnt sienna acrylic (a slightly unsaturated yellow orange), and tiny bits of gray. In addition to that, there is a small splotch of linseed oil near the middle bottom of the image that appears red tinged on the orange fibers. Looking at individual bristles you can also see how each and everyone of them are  not completely solid but actually have a semi translucent appearance showing the edges more than anything else.

It was amazing to see the detail of an instrument that has so much daily use in my life.

Thank you! 

Chloe's Turquoise Sea Turtle

When given the chance to decide what I wanted to scan at very high resolution, I decided to get my sea turtle charm scanned. The charm is important to me because it was given to me by my aunt before she passed away, and it is a reminder of her in my everyday life.

When looking at a close up of the turtle, I was able to see some of the wear and tear on the metal hardwear, which is a reminder of all the wear I get out of the necklace.

"I'm ready for my close up"-Guitar, Kate

This guitar, although monetarily and visually unimpressive, has massive emotional value. I used to live in Idaho with my mother. She had a purple version of the guitar, and I used to always play around with it. When I moved houses to San Francisco, my mom gave me my own. This has always been a connection I have to her. I keep it on my key ring (which is why it is so scratched). The part I zoomed in on is the edge of the bottom of the lining on the guitar. I really liked this piece because it looks really cool. It is interesting to see the white lining so close up because it looks really pretty.

Emma's Ring Pictures

A week ago, we all brought in something small to scan using a Giga Macro camera. I decided to have a diamond heart ring my grandmother gave to my mother and see what parts the naked eye can't see. My grandmother never really liked buying false objects, so everything she bought was real; real gold, real jade, real everything. I thought it would be interesting to see something that she has held onto for a long time. 

Here are two pictures of the ring. The first one is a bird's eye view of the entire ring, and the second one is the top right corner of the ring. I thought this part was the most interesting because you can see the shining part of the diamond along with the golden reflection of the diamond against the gold part.

"In the summer..." Madeleine 2015

From the journal of Madeleine Valdez...

Summer is rapidly approaching. The end of the school year is near; finally, I'm going to have time to do something. For a while now I've been planning to do a project at a park near my house. The park is extremely small, old and, dilapidated. It's not a part of the bay regional parks, so it needs its own caretakers. Unfortunately, the couple who had been in charge of this very task is no longer able to do it. Someone has to take the role. In the summer, I want to be that person.

"I become a transparent eyeball."

I like to take walks in the park, absent of ego, simply taking everything in: The beauty of nature and the environment fascinates me. But, despite how simple it is to enjoy the sunshine, smell the flowers, and raise your face to the coolness of the breeze... it takes work.

There are too many people who misuse parks, litter in the bushes, and trample over the flowers.

I want to pull my friends together and bring them to this little park that no one really takes care of anymore. In the summer, we will make it a place where everyone can enjoy the sunshine... as we sweat and struggle under the heat of hard work.

Many monarch butterflies rest in the Mulford Gardens during the summer season.

Noah's Summer of Science 2015

At the Academy, we will be holding a "bioblitz" in the park during March. This is where we gather and take pictures of animals and plants in the park. Then, we upload the pictures to the iNaturalist app and add information about where the species was found, and these records can be used by scientists to help further their research.

This summer, I would like to continue this work. I live very close to Golden Gate Park, and I frequently walk my dogs through Golden Gate Park, so I think it would be really neat to document more plants and animals there as I walk my dogs. The idea that I can just take pictures of different species as I walk my dogs, and that data can be used by scientists for research projects, sounds really interesting.

A picture of a path where I sometimes walk my dogs through Golden Gate Park

Kate Summer adventure 2015

This summer my parents and I are moving to Dominica (the country- not the Dominican Republic). This small Caribbean island is nicknamed the "Nature Isle of the Caribbean" with 365 rivers and . I plan on hiking there, snorkeling, and just enjoying the wildlife. I can't wait to explore and see all of the lush wildlife. Dominica has rain forests and is mostly untouched by human activity. I look forward to exploring the new country.
 Pictures:

Kate Colebrook

Emma's (scientific) Summer 2015

Unlike all the other summers I've spent over the past years, I am not going to Japan this year. Therefore, I plan on participating in either a coding program or a medical program. Since I'm extremely interested in both, I'm very excited to participate in either one of them. Although I may be a bit preoccupied by these programs, I hope to hike around the bay area with my best friend to see the cool environment around us! :)

P.S: Did you know that you can 3D print chocolate now???

Victoria's summer of science 2015 Collage

           This summer I am hopping to be able to take lots of photographs of nature and of the outside world and put them into one collage or collection and maybe do an animation to go with it and maybe put in some videos.

Chloe Summer Science

As I am currently part of a computer science class, I hope to continue to learn about coding and to continue to use Processing to create graphics and appellations that are useful in everyday life.

Blooms: Strobe-Animated Sculptures from Pier 9 on Vimeo.