THE SCIENCE OF WEATHER
Interactive Weather Lab opens at balloon museum, goes far beyond ballooning
Exhibit explores “the science, power and beauty of weather.”
Anew interactive exhibit at the Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum goes beyond hot-air ballooning to explain “the science, power and beauty of weather,” said museum manager Paul Garver.
The 2,000-square-foot Weather Lab, as the exhibit is called, is arranged around pods that contain artifacts, interactive touchscreens, videos and nearly 50 text and image panels.
The lab focuses primarily on two areas, Garver said: “The technology that we’ve used through the ages to try to better understand the weather; and then physics of weather, starting with the sun and moving through winds, cloud, precipitation and storms.”
The Weather Lab also looks at two weather conditions that are particularly important to Albuquerque and New Mexico: The Albuquerque “Box” pattern, which allows balloonists to repeatedly go back and forth over Balloon Fiesta Park during the annual fiesta; and seasonal wildfires, in which enormous forest fires create their own weather patterns.
The interactive Albuquerque Box display allows visitors to create their own hot-air balloons and learn about the technology and components of balloons, and then launch their balloon into the virtual space of the box to see how their balloon performs.
“Weather affects people on an everyday level,” Garver said. “It affects commerce and agriculture and transportation, and really our future in terms of climate and global warming. It’s clear that human activity is accelerating global warming, so we need to be thinking about how to slow that down and how to adapt to it.”
A main reason the exhibit was conceived and constructed was “to bring more STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education into the balloon museum,” said Dana Feldman, director of the city’s Cultural Services Department. “It a way for students who come to the museum on field trips to get immersed in the science of weather.”
Students at the University of New Mexico and New Mexico Highlands University also benefited by participating in the design, fabrication and construction of some of the pods and interactive devices, Feldman said.
Mayor Richard Berry also noted the STEM education possibilities for students, as well as the opportunity to “incorporate something that Albuquerque is known for worldwide, which is ballooning, and explain how weather interacts with that. It’s what makes us unique and why we are the ballooning capital of the world,” he said.
The cost of building the Weather Lab was $450,000, which came from mostly state funding, some city general obligation bond money and additional contributions from the International Balloon Museum Foundation, Garver said.
The museum is at 9201 Balloon Museum NE, just west of Jefferson and north of Alameda.