SFCC rolls out Science on a Sphere
Tech aims to raise interest in science
Inside a dark, remodeled computer lab at Santa Fe Community College is a massive sphere suspended in the air, held by nearly invisible wires. It displays data about Earth and other planets varying from the effects of climate change to drone footage of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
Science on a Sphere (SOS), a technology patented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was installed at SFCC this spring after more than two years of planning.
The goal is to use the sphere, which is six feet in diameter and weighs about 60 pounds, and its nearly 600 included data sets for science classes ranging from elementary school to college.
“I see it as a student-driven model of education,” said Maria Meyer, a member of the SOS Advisory Committee and an agriscience teacher at the Santa Fe Indian School. “More curiosity-based, interest-based, observation-based, and then we can develop predictions, hypotheses and get more students into the sciences.”
Lenny Gannes, chair of SFCC’s Sciences Department, said the college is slowly rolling out use of the sphere while school personnel learn how to operate it. He has used SOS to teach his environmental science students about climate change, using displays of how the Earth has become warmer over the past several centuries and could continue to do so.
“It gives us an opportunity to
tell those stories in a different way than I can in the classroom,” Gannes said. He said the goal now is to raise enough funding for a full-time coordinator to schedule visits, a task now handled by a student worker.
At a launch event in October, those trained to operate the technology showed guests the kinds of data it can project, such as photos of planets in the solar system and beyond; animal migration trends; the spread of diseases worldwide; and footage of Santa Rosa, Calif,, following its deadly wildfires last month.
The SOS cost about $200,000 for equipment, licensing from NOAA and room remodeling, according to Ed Barker, chair of the SOS Advisory Committee and a retired planetary astronomer. It was funded through private donors, the state Legislature and SFCC.
This is the first SOS in New Mexico and one of two installed at a community college. Local resident the Rev. Dr. Dave Wasserman saw an SOS at a nature center while working as a regional minister in Rockport, Texas.
“When I first saw this, I experienced not only the stimulation of the knowledge, but a sense of awe and beauty,” he said. “There’s a side of this for me that evokes the artistic and not (only) the scientific. They both go together.”
He organized the advisory committee of about 25 local science experts and educators before partnering with the community college. Wasserman said he’s currently working with UNM-Taos to install a new, less expensive version of SOS that displays data sets on a flatscreen.
Gannes said he hopes to get SFCC students to make their own data sets for the sphere, whether it’s science majors compiling information or film students who want a different way to screen work.
“Whatever sort of area they’re in, there’s opportunity to do something with the sphere,” he said.