World of the Rockhound; 9

Having been here we are going to return to the development of many other resources and way of life. The second largest craft hobby in America today is said to be rock counting with all of its branches of interest. Some of which are gem cutting making jewelry and the collection of gem stones rocks minerals and fossils. This universal hobby has grown to astonishing proportions in the last 25 years and shows signs of even more rapid growth as the need develops for more people to pursue more leisure time activities due to the fact that they are working fewer hours have more days off and get more vacation time. Rocks and minerals are specimens of extreme importance to the rockhound. Most people do not realize the important role rocks and minerals play in everyday living.

For example fluorite used in toothpaste and clothing. This series of programs is designed to give an overall picture of the rockhound offer encouragement to the newcomer in this hobby and present information of general interest to everyone. All of this will be examined as we explore the world of the rock. Today's programme is entitled The Yellow Submarine. The narrator is Len. Last week in a discussion of fossils we concluded with the thought that by going into the past to discover and identify the fossil remains we get a new insight into the future that in reality is the theme of the yellow submarine. A large yellow vehicle resembling a moving van which travels over the roads of Tennessee and never goes into the ocean. However had it been here millions of years ago

it would have been under the great sea which covered much of this continent. This traveling museum represents a new artistic and dramatic concept of Education which was developed by the Children's Museum of Nashville Tennessee and was made possible through Project 10 under Title 3 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It is made up of the cloud 9 material according to Dr. Virginia Dobbs director of pupil personnel services for the Metropolitan public schools. From this title for a new innovative approaches to education realizing that we do need new things for our boys and girls. So we start probably from the dreams of people in which they can. We call them plan ideas so you write these down in the beginning you don't know how it will be possible. But then you begin to play and refine and perhaps eliminate parks and

add new parks and it just to the point they dd is workable. And then we have ended up with. Several parts of the meat can project which I think very very exciting right. And when it was first written and sent to Washington it came back the whole proposal came back for us to refine and clarify or more it was still a little too dreamy. So review. With a. Part of the project and this was one in which we had to pay a fine or a plan before it was accepted because they had to know that you knew what you wanted to do that you also were able to get people that could do it. And of course people to work on these projects who are capable at a premium at this time and they they want to be able to specify that you can do this rather than just you know having the DNA dreaming stage. Dr. Virginia Dobbs mentioned the problem of finding capable people to carry out the work.

One of those very capable individuals found was now in Monroe museum artist in preparing who created many of the exhibits inside the submarine. We asked Mr. Munroe which was the most difficult display to make I think the honest hard core was perhaps not the exhibits themselves as much as the concept. You know what we were going to do and what we have done and we feel there's something in there which is a departure from anything that has been done. You know I'm using him and perhaps in other museums in the country. Primarily a visual experience environment we've created. To entice the children or academics to see the exhibit the changing exhibits which had to be put inside a box which presented the problem.

Visually changing exhibit works with glass and wrist added lights and has two separate exhibits but you only see one at one time. And through these lights and the glass on the other. So you see an actual change a physical change continuously because of the fact that we have controlled lighting situation and by opening the doors we had a continuous outside light in dark colored lights and kaleidoscopic. After Mr. Monroe's remarks had aroused a certain curiosity as to subject matter and method

we went inside the seven Marine and talked with Mr. Philbrick and crouch director of the Children's Museum. With a cracker jack in here. Yes it is a little dark but you get accustomed to the darkness in a few moments. Your light eyes will get accustomed to the darkness and pretty soon you'll be able to see the various forms and shapes and exhibits that we have in the Moby old museum. Where the first thing I know this is what you call this is. A picture of a. Spring and to hang in there and in your shoes. And higher than that. That's the introduction the mobility unit as as you can guess from the name of the yellow submarine that it might have something to do with this. And the introductory panel. If you see when you come into the van that has the title you have sand in your

shoes. Well for the first fact you might think this is ridiculous. I don't have sand in my shoes we're miles away from the ocean in the middle of Tennessee where how would I ever get sand in my shoes. But then when you come to think and think of where the sand might have come from. Many many millions of years ago Tennessee was a thief. And here is where we begin our story of the Yellow Submarine here in Tennessee with the fact that you didn't have sand in your shoes left from the seas as many millions of years ago. I'm going to Ralph here. Things are found out is that right. Yes. These are live fossils that the museum has collected from time to time people have brought in a wonderful collection of fossil Bakhit pods fossil cephalopods and the crying though it's which every young person is so enduring.

Has seen before in the in their own backyard. Children used to call an Indian money but these are crying no edge or an animal that used to live in the bottom of the sea. And no other are found here in Tennessee. These are our family in Tennessee they're found in counties mostly of Tennessee something I'm now doing well to like it I think. No descriptions no written description of the thing here. No this this is true. This whole exhibit is what we might call an environment or an experience. We realize that where there is an entire exhibit say one thing and like the labels and text and so forth the school class is visiting the mobile unit would not have time to absorb and read everything within it the same way that you would have time in visiting a museum.

So this is sort of an experience. Exhibit in which you will come in and look at the colorful animated touchable items and then going back to your school room the teacher will have a large guide or brochure in which she can refer to and then hopefully they will discuss what they have seen and been motivated by their visit to the mobile unit. Let it go on and look inside of this first display here. It has a red cow. And that kind of a little square. I have. Kept our school here. The power to look to know what is found inside it looks like hands moving around to me that I know its not our this is our These are very colorful geometric design display. Peek boxes you remember the early Easter eggs or shoe box exhibits that we used to look at

children. We have made these. In a sense to have people participate in other words you see this brightly colored designed box with a light blinking out of the top and you look down in other words you are involved in this exhibit and hear this first one that you look down you see through a plant like. Creature staring up at you with a pulsating movement. And the models are record because of the early kind o edge that we find in fossil life. And here we have shown them as they would have appeared were we looking down at them from the surface of the water in the sea. And then moving back. Yeah. The current of the water and the sunlight flickering

office you were looking down into the sea see many fingered creatures looking up at you in the sand. They are animal that looks like a plant but it is an animal. These little fingers that you see my minute objects from the sea in which they feed upon. Now I think something else that's life going on in our family. I'm green and look like a man. I. Yes it does but that is a big piece of glass. As you remember earlier we discussed the early fossil life and the fact that the sea was here and because the sea was here in Tennessee. It left vast resources economic value from which Tennessee has grown. Here you see that this blinking light behind this large piece of green

object this is glass and this is why a great deal of sand in Tennessee is used in making a blast. Some 60 odd percent of glass is sand from West Tennessee and a certain percentage is limestone and then a few other minerals found in Tennessee this is all melted together in a large foundry and this is a piece of crude glass. It looks like well it's almost the color of a Coca-Cola bottle. And it's a piece of crude glass. That is. Formed before it is heated and melted began to roll out in large sheets for glass for automobiles glass for store windows and glass for houses and so forth. Ready for an era of cars doing that in your car and yes exactly what is it doing here and what relation has an ear

of corn got to this whole exhibit. Well as we look further we realize that phosphate is another product laid down by the sea. And if it weren't for phosphate fertilizer for our crops we wouldn't have the wonderful corn and of course many other crops that we grow in Tennessee. If it wasn't for good fertilizer in other words phosphate which is part of the natural resources that are so abundant in Tennessee and here you see a corn plant growing in phosphate ground in the bottom and then delicious to hear of corn nicely buttered and peppered turning in the foreground there it almost looks good enough to eat that. No it's a facsimile of the alimentary. Our wonderful artist made this. You can even see bits and pieces out of the side

corridor before he made a cast of it. Recognize that coin is made of wax entirely of wax and the batter is another type of wine. We have it electrified In other words the motor behind it so it rotates very slowly in the flickering light that is upon it. As children go through I do take it quietly and then. There are three areas which explain that this exhibit run as we go through it. We will have materials that teach your or one of our curators up to. Explain to the children of a school class on what to see and what they are expect what to look for and what they're expected to see

within the van. They come to the museum and there is a tape. That. Gives and the. Thought of an environmental feeling of what. They might expect. New area new resources. And then following their visit to the band they will go back to the classroom and have a more detailed. Guide To further. Interest. In the environment around us because from here we can go back to our classroom and then perhaps take a trip to acquire arre and see actual biased humans and so forth. We might visit a phosphate plant we might visit a sand place and so in this way realize that this wonderful sea having been here we are going to return to the sea

for development of many other resources and way of life. We have done so much with lighting. This is an entirely new contact isn't it. Yes lighting plays a very important part in the exhibit as you can see overhead. There are. For five panels translucent photographs of pictures under the sea and on the land depicting various areas in which the whole exhibit covers. And these lights behind them do not blink on and off as a traffic sign or roadside sign but they're made to post say so that the whole exhibit has a movement behind it a pulsation of light. And as you've heard some of the music earlier on this program and perhaps later the whole exhibit has a beat. It has a motion and. A

movement that we hope to involve. People with when they visit the mobile unit. He was in the shadows of only the. Soft sand feeling. Ripley under your bed. Step on the shelf. But not so white hot. Norm distance heat over a million here evaporates the sea. Like room from a car. You stand on the ocean floor. The ocean now gone. In the midst. Of this.

And how place tiny skeletons of compressed with the sand in the slime into rough rocks breaking up into particles. Earthquakes forming mountains and valleys. You stand on what was once the sea bottom. What is not right I learned made rich by sea creatures. Damn. I know. And you are free to harvest a million years later and. You make life. On limestone. You make roads and buildings. With phosphate you feed the plants. Which keep you alive. Tennessee it's time. For the land of.

Memory forever. Don't. Touch the fossils. By the creek. Telling you. You. Never dreamed possible. The fabric of man madly and lodging on a loom out of control. Two hundred million

Americans now four hundred million Americans by the year 2000 Chinese increasing by even larger proportions. Europeans Africa resources are already hard pressed. And. May be given only to take it over 20 years. It is growing. Down to the sea. You will not go fishing. You will raise fish. Scientifically an undersea well the fish can feed millions as meat and as grain. You will not do without drinking water. You have perfect economical systems of getting fresh water from the salty ocean. You will be able to drink. Reports of the earth. You will not live in gigantic I was in family skyscraper apartments like hens

going to market. You will live in the. Last. One. Enjoying the limitless space. As they do now. Breathing will be no problem. You will have perfected a membrane which will serve as was for your house which will keep out everything in the water but. The oxygen. The sea is becoming both a fire and a living room. From which. And in ways. You can live happily ever after. That was the sound of the Yellow Submarine sound which tells the story of fossils and future a future under the sea. According to script writer Tupper Saussy things took a rather unexpected turn when the sound was heard by

visiting groups of children. This he referred to as the people crisis the people crisis. This was one of the funniest things that I suppose ever happened to me. I wanted. To achieve the the feeling of the expansion of the population and we did this through echo chambers and all sorts of electronic Krikorian. And. You know to the beginning of the second portion of the script has people people repeat it over itself. And reverberating throughout the walls of the submarine. I suppose crouch and I listen to this thing. For. 25 or 30 times. I didn't notice anything wrong with it we understood it perfectly as people sort of the engineer and the announcer up in New York who recorded the thing. But Phil noticed that when he

brought the first audience in the submarine at this point they all started laughing and they were impossible to. It was impossible to calm them down. He questioned them about why they were going on like this and they said well we think the announcer thing he he he it sounds like a funhouse. So this is an interesting thing about communication that you can be absolutely certain of a fact. And when the fact is it's put into practice. You can be proved wrong. So I believe what we're going to do is just cut out that section altogether. I think I mean I think I think it's not the fact they're just they way they in fact I thought it had done been done perfectly that way. To. Catch their interest and then to put them in this sort of eerie atmosphere that they might find underneath that they were living down here. Well it it it it sort of hedges on on hearing this and cheer hysteria. I think that is what the is what breeds

understand that. Recently it's been just about been extraordinarily difficult to keep them calm after that point. The submarine was created primarily for children and this was the reaction of third grader Trey studio but were you surprised it did you know what you're going to see when you went in there. No ma'am. Were you surprised to see. Yes ma'am. You think this might come to your school sometime. I know really all. You have. Yeah. Really did. You think of the children really enjoyed it when they go. On leave in my will go to the end. The yellow submarine has someone on duty whenever school groups or adults go through it and reactions are varied as cited by Linda bits of the museum staff. I have a definite feeling that many people come in just with the idea of glancing over things and not involving themselves in the ideas presented. For instance one Sunday

I was sitting out there in a group of children and they were all about. They were there for half an hour and I finally went to see what on earth was going on. And they were seated in a circle discussing they were thanking. While they were in there a short time later another visitor came and put his nose in it and then his whole body came out and said Well there sure isn't much to say in there. This is a great deal of difference I think people look at things some people are willing to be involved in I think children particularly they haven't reached sophistication as adults where we tend to just skim the surface and involve ourselves in the ideas. The children of the part about how population is increasing how we need this increasing populations on how to make fresh water from salt water which will be a necessity. The exhibits of how we can mine minerals in the bottom of the ocean are how we can live there. And this has stimulated their thinking about it. They realize that yes in their neighborhood. They did

need a lot of things and now they're. At a nine year old level their conclusion was that it was all women's problem just have too many babies. And that's the story of the Yellow Submarine a traveling museum which depicts life as it was millions of years ago and how all of that affects our living today and tomorrow. This has been another in the series of programs exploring the world of the rock out. The narrator was Len felt this series is produced by the service of the public library of Nashville and Davidson County in Nashville Tennessee. Next week Mrs. Ford will discuss the fascinating aspects of this hobby and a program entitled The Art of the display.

This is Charles Mitchell. This is in the national educational radio network.