Museum curators hope to answer those questions and more with a new exhibit, “Power Play.”
Using interactive games and information, the exhibit allows people a chance to explore how different methods of energy collection and power production can affect the way a city functions.
Yet, it’s not just diagrams and standard museum 2-D visuals. With help from the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, the museum created several interactive, hands-on experiments. It tells a powerful story on energy collection and power distribution in the state.
The centerpiece of the exhibit is “City Engine,” an interactive, five-part model that relies on user interaction to bring power to the “city.”
The model is geared toward children, but anyone can interact with different components to make the city work. Blowing into a spinner helps create wind power, pressing your hands against a sensor simulates geothermal energy extraction, and twisting a valve represents a controller adjusting the water pressure coming through a dam.
Each energy station, if performed correctly, creates energy — in the form of marbles — that powers the city. If enough energy is produced, some of it is stored. If not enough energy is stored or produced, it’s lights out for the city.
Renewable energy supplements the nonrenewable energy already in the system from fossil fuels.
This illustrates what the exhibit is trying to relay: All aspects of energy are derived from solar, and they all work together to power people’s lives. An interactive video game lets players use cards to lower or raise energy costs in the Interior. Users can see how kilowatt hour rates will be affected by adding or removing energy resources. A wind tunnel lets students see how different types of turbine blades collect energy. Outside of the games, the visuals also provide interesting information.
An important part of the exhibit, according to curator Gwen Holdmann, is the placards that show potential energy on a map of Alaska in comparison to how much is being collected.
The exhibit is not out to convince museum-goers that one type of energy is more efficient or better than another, instead it shows how different types of energy work together to power communities.
“When people talk about renewable, there's this big break,” said Holdmann, who is also director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power.
“There’s not. It's a continuum.”
Holdmann is the guest curator of the exhibit. She hopes people realize how important energy is and how critical it is in our lives. Society needs to consider how to maintain energy costs in order to maintain the level of wealth. There could be problems as the use of fossil fuels increases while its production shrinks.
“There’s not just one solution,” she said. “We need to look at all the resources. They all have the right application in the right place.”
Contact features writer Suzanna Caldwell at 459-7504.
IF YOU GO
What: Power Play
When: Summer hours 9 a.m.-9 p.m. seven days a week; opens Saturday, on display through December
Where: University of Alaska Museum of the North
Tickets: Included with admission, $10, $9 senior, $7 youth (7-17), free for UA students (with ID), museum members and children under 7
Information: www.uaf.edu/ museum
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