The Holy Grail of earthquake science is the ability to predict with some certainty 3 important characteristics of an anticipated earthquake: its time, place, and magnitude. Earthquake science has made great strides in recognizing earthquake-prone regions, calculating earthquake probabilities and anticipating the potential for damage. In the right hands, this information has proved invaluable in saving lives and property.

The only element lacking for true prediction is the ability to determine the exact time of an earthquake. Due to the chaotic nature of the physics behind rock fracturing, it is unlikely that an earthquake will ever be predicted with precision well in advance. The best that can be hoped for is a short-term warning based upon a signature precursor that heralds the actual earthquake. This kind of warning may be never more than on the order of minutes or seconds, but even that kind of margin may well separate life from death.

For now engineers and planners armed with current earthquake science, building to modern codes and prepared to respond after earthquakes strike, can give earthquake-prone areas a good chance of withstanding all but the strongest earthquakes as well as provide the necessary resiliency to quickly recover from them.

It is in those areas where earthquake awareness is lacking or structures fail to meet minimum safety standards that devastation and tragedy awaits. Haiti is the latest victim, and this poor country has been doubly victimized by both a failure to correctly anticipate the imminent danger, and to mitigate against it.

According to Nature Magazine, at the 2008 Caribbean Geological Conference, Paul Mann of the University of Texas at Austin presented a paper entitled “Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden Strike-Slip Fault Zone: A Major Seismic Hazard Affecting Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica.” The abstract alone was chilling in its prescience:

…Recorded seismicity over the past 40 years is sparse as expected from a fully locked fault plane. GPS-constrained block models with elastic strain accumulation give ~8 mm/year of slip rate on the fault. Since the last major event in south-central Dominican Republic was in 1751, that yields ~2 meters of accumulated strain deficit, or a Mw=7.2 earthquake if all is released in a single event today.
…

It’s important to note that this paper didn’t make a prediction that went unheeded. It presented a scenario that could have occurred the day after the conference or 50 years from now. The sad reality is while the correct response should have been to initiate a multi-billion dollar investment in improving the infrastructure of Haiti, as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, it could hardly feed its own people much less undertake the necessary capital improvements, and certainly not within a two-year window.

But it is also true that neighboring Jamaica and the Dominican Republic dodged a bullet. Our understanding of the EPGFZ was not sophisticated enough to rule out that the 1/12 earthquake wasn’t going to devastate Kingston instead. Billions saved by not taking mitigation measures will hopefully be spent to restore Haiti, and maybe even to improve it.

Looking forward, will we continue to see this pattern replayed again and again:

• 2003: an earthquake levels Bam, Iran killing over 26,000 people.
• 2004: the second-largest earthquake ever recorded generates a tsunami that sweeps across the Indian Ocean and kills 228,000 people.
• 2005: an earthquake destroyed an area the size of Belgium in northern Pakistan and Kashmir, killing 75,000 people.
• 2008: a 7.9 earthquake in the Sichuan Province of China killing 70,000.

We have the ability to determine where earthquakes are likely to occur. We have the ability to determine where buildings and infrastructure are likely to be severely damaged or destroyed. At this point, we still apparently lack the will to devote the necessary expenditures to protect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

While it may be easy to dismiss these catastrophic disasters as just a fact of life in the developing world, bear in mind that geologists predict a similarly-sized magnitude 7.0 earthquake will eventually strike the midsection of the U.S. along what is known as the New Madrid Fault. Over 1 million people in Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri are living in the same kinds of unreinforced masonry structures that have become deathtraps in Haiti.

It was a relatively innocuous claim from a recent NY Times article about how the “Cash For Clunkers” program has affected the recycled automobile (formerly known as “junkyard”) industry:

Michael Wilson, executive vice president of the national Automotive Recyclers Association, estimates that 750,000 clunkers ultimately will be traded in. Parked bumper to bumper, the clunkers would stretch nearly from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.

Really? That’s a lot of cars, but we’re talking from LA to DC here. Surely a traffic jam of derelict beaters couldn’t possibly reach all the way across the country? How long is a car anyway? And just how far is it from LA to DC?

I’m guessing a car is 12 feet long, so some quick math: 440 12-ft. long vehicles will fit in a mile, 750K of them would come to about 1705 miles. A check with Google Maps reveals an LA-DC distance of 2671 miles. Huh.

My math isn’t off, but either I’m grossly underestimating the length of a typical clunker, or somebody at the NY Times doesn’t know how to use a calculator. Maybe I should get a better idea of what these clunkers look like.

Let’s pull up a list of the top 10 clunkers according to the NHTSA:

1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F-150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
5. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD
6. Ford Explorer 2WD
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Ford F-150 Pickup 4WD
9. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
10. Ford Windstar

Okay, obviously pickups are going to be longer than sedans. Next, I’ll look up each vehicle’s specs (found some on Motor Trend’s site) for the most recent model year (you think the auto manufacturers started making the later models smaller?) and distribute them equally since I have no idea how many of each vehicle has been turned in. If you were to line up 75,000 of each car, you get something like this:

• Ford Explorer 4WD (193.4 in.) 229 mi.
• Ford F-150 Pickup 2WD (211.2 in.) 250 mi.
• Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD (188.0 in.) 223 mi.
• Jeep Cherokee 4WD (4,255.0 mm.) 198 mi.
• Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD (202.5 in.) 240 mi.
• Ford Explorer 2WD (193.4 in.) 229 mi.
• Chevrolet Blazer 4WD (177.3 in.) 210 mi.
• Ford F-150 Pickup 4WD (211.2 in.) 250 mi.
• Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD (5,639.0 mm.) 263 mi.
• Ford Windstar (5,103.0 mm.) 238 mi.
• Total distance: 2,329 mi.

As turns out, these cars are quite a bit longer than 144in. Going with a roughly even distribution of cars gets you a lot closer to DC, but you still come up short. Interestingly enough, that 2329 miles is the Google distance from LA to Charleston, WV.

Let’s try 750,000 of the longest car, the Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD, instead. That gets you a total of 2,628 miles, close enough to get you into the DC suburbs where you can always pick up the Metro to take you downtown.

What is we went with the smallest car? You end up with 1983 miles of eerily silent Jeep Cherokees, 4WD hubs all locked in, but with no more hills to climb, only reaching as far as the Nashville suburb of Kingston Springs.

Now of course, we could talk about crows flying or Great Circling, and it so happens that the Great Circle distance from LAX to DCA is only about 2311 miles, which is probably the distance our intrepid reporter used.
Unfortunately, a hypothetical smoothly polished Earth girded with a quarter of a million junk cars doesn’t seem quite as evocative an image as a cross country roadtrip passing mile after mile of shoulders lined with the post-apocalyptic remains of a bygone era.

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that once again, San Francisco Department of Public Works crews are undertaking the arduous task of removing sand from the Great Highway adjacent to Ocean Beach.

No matter how many times work crews clear it off the Great Highway and the adjacent pedestrian promenade at the city’s western shore, it keeps coming back.

“It’s a regular cycle,” said Mohammed Nuru, deputy director of the San Francisco Department of Public Works.

As it does every year, the city will undertake a major project to remove sand from Ocean Beach, and the adjacent walkway and highway between Noriega and Santiago streets in the Outer Sunset, and relocate it a bit south to shore up an eroding seawall.

Anyone that visits the SF Zoo or the beach knows there are dunes everywhere, but where does all that sand come from?

Some of it is just ordinary beach sand eroded from the sandstone cliffs near Fort Funston to the south. These cliffs are the exposures of a pair of rock formations geologists refer to as the Merced and the Colma.

These sandstone formations are relatively young (1.8-0.01 Myo.), and stretch down the peninsula coastline from Lake Merced to just past Mussel Rock. Because they’re weak, Pacific winter storms regularly chip away at the cliff faces, causing landslides threaten to carry parts of Daly City’s subdivisions to the beaches below.

Interestingly, the rest of the sand actually comes from a source 100 miles to the east and 16,000 years in the past: the Sierra Nevadas.

Back during the last glacial period, around 20-16 Kya, glaciers ground down the granite rocks that make up the Sierra, and seasonal melt waters fed those sediments to the tributaries of a Pleistocene Era Sacramento River.

However, back then sea levels were considerably lower, on the order of 400 ft. lower, so while sediments nowadays get dropped into the Bay, the Sacramento would have been able to deposit its sediments onto a vast shelf of relatively dry land stretching out past the Farallon Islands, because there was no bay to flow into.

After the runoff floods receded, all that alluvial sand dried out, leaving it vulnerable to northerly winds which picked it up and carried it right back across the what is now the Bay Area, all the way to Oakland. Check out this portion of the USGS Geologic Map of The San Francisco Bay Region:

Click to see larger version

The areas marked “Qs” are Q(uaternary) s(ands). Nearly half of modern San Francisco sits on top of these ancient dunes. Visitors to Golden Gate Park and can see the residual hilly outlines of these ancient dunes. When Western San Francisco was built, there was no way to truck out all the sand, some of which had piled into dunes 60 ft. high, so they were stabilized with acres and acres of vegetation.

Examination of the sand reveals its origins in the Sierra Basolith. It’s composed of translucent quartzes; black magnetites (you did bring a magnet?); and if you’re lucky, even traces of gold. If you plan to mine it for Cash4Gold, the Department of Public Works can probably direct you to where they’d like you to start digging.

For this week’s Cinema Science we take a look at the Land of the Lost (opening 06.05.09), a remake of the Sid and Marty Kroft Saturday morning TV series of the same name. In Land of the Lost, explorers [Rick] Marshall, Will, and Holly survive the “greatest earthquake ever known” only to find themselves transported to an strange world filled with vengeful dinosaurs, alien technology, and the slow-witted but somehow menacing Sleestak.

Unlike its mid-70′s predecessor which was taped entirely on a soundstage with crude by contemporary standards chromakey effects, the big-screen version of the Land of the Lost has the luxury of state-of-the-art CGI visual effects and location shooting.

For Land of the Lost‘s other-worldly look, producers looked to the nearby Mojave Desert for suitable locations. For years, California’s Mojave Desert has been the go-to location when moviemakers wanted to depict the Western frontier, barren wastelands, or alien worlds. Situated in the Basin and Range southeast of the Sierra Nevada, extension (stretching) of the earth’s crust creates a distinctive pattern of valleys (basins) bounded by mountains (ranges). As the land literally pulls apart from east to west, huge blocks of stone fracture and dip downward, creating the characteristic north/south trending ranges.

This California geological province, called the Mojave Block, is one of the driest and hottest places in the world. It is home to the lowest point in the U.S: Death Valley, a deep rift between the Panamint Range to the west and the Amargosa Range to the east. Each of these ranges, as well as the Inyo Mountains and the Sierra Nevada to the west, cast their 10,000+ foot “rain shadows” across the entire region. Storms from the Pacific cannot make the climb up these mountains, instead shedding their moisture far to the west. Only an occasional seasonal monsoon sneaks in from the south. Wind scours the landscape, picking up sand and blasting it against every surface, pocking it and whittling it down relentlessly. The Mojave can appear to be a hellish alien world, but it also a hauntingly beautiful one.

Trona Pinnacles

Fans of science fiction television and movies have undoubtedly seen the Trona Pinnacles used as the backdrop for countless alien worlds, and Land of the Lost is no exception. After arriving in the Land, Will Farrell’s Rick Marshall finds himself on the wrong side of Tyrannosaurus Rex, nicknamed “Grumpy,” and humorously tries to evade him amidst a forest of jagged stone towers. What are those features anyway, and where did they come from?

The Trona Pinnacles are rock formations called tufa, a calcium carbonate deposit formed in the waters of deep alkaline lakes. If these lakes are sited over springs, groundwater can percolate into the lake. In the case where groundwater picks up calcium from rocks under the lakebed, the dissolved calcium will react with the soda carbonates in the lake water to produce a calcium carbonate precipitate. When the lakes evaporate, tall stacks of the carbonate are left high and dry.

The formations are quite fragile, and so sites like the Trona Pinnacles and Mono Lake, where tufas are still being formed, must be protected. For example all visitors to the Trona Pinnacles as well as the Land of the Lost production are required by BLM rules to “leave no footprints.”

The 500-odd tufa pinnacles that make up the Trona Pinnacles formed in what is now called Dry Lake Searles, back when it was one of a chain of lakes that filled with Sierra Nevada glacial runoff at the end of each ice age. As the massive runoff flowed down off the Sierras, an interconnected drainage system that filled lakes from Mono Lake in the north to Death Valley in the south.

The pinnacles are classified into three groups, each group corresponding to different glacial periods from 100,000 years ago for the earliest, to 10,000 years ago for the most recent. The tallest of the towers reach as high as 140 feet, giving an impression of how deep the lake must have been.

Human artifacts, including spear points, sticks, and animal bones indicated that 8-10 kya., when the climate was milder and Searles Lake had water, both humans and animals were drawn to it. The lake and others like it supported a complex ecosystem of plants, insects, and birds, not unlike Mono Lake does to this day.

The Trona Pinnacles are 20 miles east of Ridgecrest off SR178. Access to the Pinnacles is via dirt road, and there is a pretty easy hiking trail around them. There are no services other than a vault toilet, and only primitive camping is permitted by the BLM. It can get to over 115º during the summer, so go early in the morning, late in the evening, or during some other season.

Dumont Dunes

When the heroes of Land of the Lost meet their native guide, Chaka the cave-boy, they are standing on the real-life Dumont Dunes. For years, dune buggy and sand-rail enthusiasts have flocked to this assemblage of sand dunes east of the Amargosa river. The dunes stretch across nearly 12 miles of desert, and may contain on the order of 6.8 billion cu. ft. of sand. Some dunes can reach 400 ft. in height.

It’s a bit difficult to pin down the origins of the dunes. As near as I can tell, these eolian (wind-created) dunes were created from the sediments left over after the Pleistocene-era lakes described above dried up. The fine sediments are periodically carried into the area by the Amargosa river or brought in on the wind. Since the neighboring Dumont Hills form a natural amphitheater, the dune sands fed by the prevailing westerly winds are entrapped rather than blow away. Over time, the winds alter the configuration and location of the dunes, and even now, studies have shown the eastern edge of the dunes to be slowly migrating to east.

The Dumont Dunes is notable for another reason. Sand avalanches on the dunes can often produce a low humming sound, and dunes that produce these sounds are referred to as “booming” or “singing.” Supposedly, it is quite easy to produce the sounds at Dumont and at the nearby Kelso and Eureka Dunes.

For years, various theories as to the cause of the sounds have been floated, but in 2005 and 2006 a group of engineering undergraduates at Cal Tech systematically recorded the booms with geophones in an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery. Their work, which looked like a lot of sliding around on their butts, was featured in a 2005 Nova: ScienceNow episode. The resulting 2007 paper is rather technical, but here’s the gist: the booms are produced by sand grains rubbing against each other, and the interface between the dry surface sand and the moist interior sand forms a “waveguide” to amplify the sounds.

The Dumont Dunes Off-highway Vehicle Area is located off CA127 31 miles north of Baker, CA. Access passes are available from the BLM and camping is permitted.

La Brea Tar Pits/George C. Page Museum

If you don’t feel like venturing out into the harsh environment of the eastern Mojave, you can find another Land of the Lost location located in the heart of a major California metropolis. When the movie introduces Dr. Rick Marshall, he is a discredited “quantum palentologist” reduced to entertaining schoolchildren in a basement lab at the La Brea Tar Pits.

Now, the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits does indeed host a research facility dedicated to studying the largest collection of Ice Age plant and animal specimens in the world’s only active urban paleontological site. Visitors can even observe scientists and volunteers work in the “fish bowl” laboratory.

For Land of the Lost, filmmakers consulted with the staff of the Page Museum in order to authentically create Rick Marshall’s laboratory setting, even stocking it with bone samples from the same supplier. Additionally, they were given unprecedented access to the famous tar pit at Wilshire Blvd. and Curson, where even now gas eerily bubbles up through the tarry asphalt.

The La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum are located at Hancock Park in the Miracle Mile district at 5801 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. The Museum is open Tuesday-Sunday from 10am-6pm.

Land of the Lost stills: NBC-Universal Pictures
Trona Pinnacles photo: Doug Dolde
Dumont Dunes photo: Doc Searls

Beginning May 29, audiences to Disney/Pixar’s motion picture Up will be treated to yet another of the Emeryville, CA animation studio’s breathtaking visions: a fantastic South American world of towering waterfalls; vast, aircraft carrier-flat mesas called tepuis; and immense hangar-like caves.

In Up, elderly Carl Frederikson (voiced by Ed Asner) strings up a massive array of balloons to loft his house on a quest to find his boyhood hero, presumed lost in the jungles of South America. In a nod to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, the centerpiece of the story is Paradise Falls, a legendary waterfall which cascades a staggering 9700 feet from cloud-enshrouded cliffs to the jungle below.

Although Paradise Falls doesn’t exist, Up‘s directors did visit real world locations in South America to model their fictional waterfall. Guided by Adrian Warren, director of the 2003 PBS documentary The Living Edens: The Lost World Tepuis, director Pete Docter and a select group of artists visited Canaima National Park in Venezuela to witness the tepuis firsthand, and to collect the sketches, photographs, and video that would later be used by art and technical directors as reference in creating their own “Lost World.”

In South America, the peculiar mesas depicted in Up are called tepui, or “house of the gods” in the language of the local Pémon. Geologically speaking, the tepuis are all that remains of a vast block of sandstone (known to geologists as the Pacaraima Plateau) that formed 1.8 billion years ago, when the continental basement rock (which geologists refer to as the Amazon Craton) was successively inundated over some 200 million years by a series lakes and seas. Where exposed, the bedrocks of the Amazon Craton are called the Guiana Shield. At over 2 billion years old, the Guiana Shield is oldest rock in South America, and among some of the oldest rocks in the world.

When South America and Africa separated during the formation of the Atlantic Ocean some 180 million years ago, the entire region was uplifted for good and became what is known as the Guyana Highlands. However, under the stress of the uplift, the Pacaraima was broken up, and the forces of erosion began to take its toll on the exposed rock. Only the most-resistant columns of rock survived the onslaught of wind and water, leaving behind the distinctive sheer cliffs of sandstone rising from piles of eroded talus debris.

To get a feel for the sheer scale of the tepuis, the Pixar team visited 3 of the most famous tepui: Mount Roraima, next-door Kukenan, and Auyantepui. At the eastern end of the Canaima National Park, Mount Roraima lies on the intersection of 3 country borders: Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela. At 2810m tall, it is the tallest of the tepuis and the most famous, having inspired Doyle’s The Lost World. Despite its height, a ramp-like feature called the Roraima Ramp makes it relatively scalable.

That doesn’t mean it’s a walk in the park, according to Up co-director/writer Bob Peterson:

“It was like your worst nightmare,” says Peterson. “It was like a six- or seven- hour climb to the top, and I had on way too much gear. When we got to the top, we had to hike across uneven terrain for another hour and a half. It was already dark when we got to our camp. And suddenly, from out of the darkness we saw this cave lit by candles and there was warm soup waiting for us. We we saw our tents, most of us just sat down and started crying. We were so happy to be there.”

At the western end of the park lies the great Auyantepui, (“House of the Devil”), the largest of the tepuis and home to Angel Falls. Angel Falls is the tallest waterfall on earth at 979m with a clear drop of 807m. If you study a map of Auyantepi, you might notice the falls drain into the river Kerep at its base, but there appears to be no corresponding stream at the summit. How can this happen?

Quick meteorology lesson: as moisture from the ocean and surrounding jungle tries to climb up the 2460m tepui, it cools and condenses into the characteristic cloud layers that enshroud most tepuis. A constant stream of tropical moisture means the tepuis are more often than not covered by clouds and mist. Moisture squeezed from the clouds collects at the 700 km² summit of Auyantepui and while some of it will trickle through fissures in the sandstone, a significant remainder cascades off the cliff to form the magnificent Angel Falls.

While Angel Falls may seem like a heavenly name countering a sinister-sounding indigenous one, in reality, Angel Falls was actually named for pilot Jimmy Angel. While searching in 1937 for an amazing waterfall he originally spotted in 1933, Angel managed to crash-land on the summit of Auyantepui. He and his party had to walk for 11 days before finding help. The ensuing publicity surrounding his miraculous rescue prompted the Venezuelan government to name the falls after him. His airplane “El Rio Caroni” was ultimately retrieved in 1970 and now sits on display at the Ciudad Bolivar airport.

As you might expect, having a lot of really flat, wide mountains hovering 1000m above the surrounding terrain might make for some interesting flora and fauna, and you’d be right. The flora of the tepuis are distinct from the Amazonian rain forests and savannahs that surround them and is called the Panepui floristic province. There are 4 major vegetative zones associated with a tepui: the base, the talus, the base of the escarpment, and the summit. Each zone has a unique set of flora adapted to survive in the particular soil type and microclimate. Each tepui has its own set of flora.

At the summit things can get really interesting. Since the soils are so poor and acidic, and sunlight can be intermittent, insectivorous plants have evolved to adapt to the conditions. Among them are Drosera Roraimae, a type of sundew that capture insects with sticky gobs, and Utricularia humboldtii, a type of bladderwort that captures its prey in a special water-filled bladder.

Look closely in Up, and you’ll likely spot Stegolepis, Orectantes, and Aphanocarpus, and dozens more.

Due to this rich diversity of life, in 1962 Venezuela designated a significant sector of the state of Bolivar to become a new Parque Nacional Canaima. In 1975, the park was extended to encompass the surrounding Gran Sabana. In 1994, the Canaima National Park and its tepuis were designated a UN World Heritage Site.

Back around February 25th of this year, the California Academy of Sciences released the results of a poll conducted for them in December 2008 by Harris Interactive. The results were not good:

A new national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences and conducted by Harris Interactive® reveals that the U.S. public is unable to pass even a basic scientific literacy test.

The survey revealed the distressing news that Americans couldn’t properly identify the length of time for the earth to go around the sun, estimate the amount of fresh water on the surface of the earth, or decide whether to go along with the idea that we once walked with dinosaurs. The Cal Academy had designed and administered a “basic scientific literacy test” and the country that developed a pill to produce erections on demand had failed it.

The reaction from the science blogosphere: a sad acknowledgement that while the merit of such a survey was debatable, its conclusions were unsurprising and probably correct.

Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection wrote:

But, wait a second… Before rushing to attack the American education system, first consider: What do such quizzes actually reveal? Is it fair to use the results as evidence ofscientific illiteracy? Furthermore, what does that term really mean?

Over at NeuroLogica Blog, Steven Novella questioned these surveys as a measure of science literacy:

Also, a metaquestion raised by this survey is how good these surveys are themselves. What do they really tell us? If anything they overestimate scientific literacy because they are multiple choice – so some of the percentage correct were due to lucky guessing. Also, they don’t really test scientific understanding, just random bits of scientific trivia. There probably is some correlation between knowing basic science facts and being interested in and understanding science, but these are not the same thing.

Adult science literacy is the name of the game here at Science4Grownups, but it’s a little beyond the scope of this blog to solve that problem. What I could do is find out how hard the test was, and whether I could pass it. Going to the Cal Academy website reveals a little quiz in a corner of the home page entitled “Test Your Science.” Answering 4 questions will get you the results of how respondents answered those same questions on the survey.

But wait. 4 questions? Really? The California Academy of Sciences has determined the U.S. is scientifically illiterate based upon 4 questions? That can’t be right.

My curiosity got the better of me, so I went ahead and called up Steven Ng at California Academy of Sciences, and after exchanging several emails over the course of a week, I was able to get the most of the poll questions, some aggregate results, and Harris Interactive’s methodology.

The questions are included below, and the results will be included in an upcoming post. Demographic questions are not included, nor is the script questioners are instructed to read. I also don’t know for certain whether this is the order in which the questions were asked.

My thoughts:

Out of 32 questions, 6 or 18% are factual: Q10-Q15; the rest are opinion questions. To me, this hardly qualifies it a test of anything, much less scientific literacy. While Q10-Q12 could be consider questions of “basic” science literacy (I think Q11 about the dinosaurs is a bit a stretch), I’m not sure how knowing what percentage of the Earth’s water is fresh constitutes anything other than geographical trivia.

Q2 appears to be a relatively reasonable question about interest in various scientific issues. However, it seems odd they asked one general question about “science discoveries,” one about genetic discoveries (which are a form of science discovery last I checked) and then 4 questions about environment-related issues. Is the idea to identify what environmental issues interest people most, or just to confirm that people have some interest in various environmental issues?

For some reason Q3 doesn’t then ask about knowledgeability for the exact same areas as in Q2.

Q2-Q5 and Q16 are all questions begging for response bias. Of course, puppies are a good thing, or in these cases how important interest and knowledge of science is, right?

In Q6, whether or not you have any inkling of what scientists are doing, you’re quite likely to agree with this statement, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that. Scientists today work in a myriad of areas of study, each requiring specialized terminology, techniques, and expertise. Again, this seems to be a question subject to response bias. That they didn’t do a better job of neutralizing the question was bad enough (eg, “I understand a lot, some, not much, or nothing at all about what scientists are doing today”), but there is no followup question asking whether the respondent is comfortable or uncomfortable with the implications of the answer given.

Quite frankly, Q9 begins with a scientifically illiterate statement. It is indeed the scientific consensus is that many species go extinct every year, but that’s normal – species go extinct all the time, otherwise we probably wouldn’t be here.

By the time I got to the end of it, the survey really began to grate on me. Essentially, it asks a lot of relatively vague or open-to-interpretation questions mostly about the environment (which you can find out more about by visiting the California Academy of Sciences, open M-S from…), but when challenged about the lack of clarity, the out seems to be: “well, you’d understand what we mean if you were properly scientifically literate.” I would argue that scientific inquiry is about making sure you carefully ask questions in the right way and this respect, the design of this survey fails.

Next up, we look at the results. Thanks to Steven Ng of the California Academy of Sciences for helping me pull together the questions and the results.

Q1. How connected do you feel to the natural world – very connected, somewhat connected, not very connected, or not at all connected?

2. How interested are you in … – very interested, moderately interested, or not at all interested?

Q2a. New scientific discoveries

Q2b. Environmental issues

Q2c. Discoveries in genetics

Q2d. The discovery of new species

Q2e. The extinction of species

Q2f. The future of energy resources (such as oil and natural gas)

3. How knowledgeable do you feel about … – very knowledgeable, moderately knowledgeable, or not at all knowledgeable?

Q3a. New scientific discoveries

Q3b. Environmental issues

Q3c. What you can do personally to protect the natural world

4. Would knowing more about science and the way it works help you to …? (Yes, No, Not Sure)

Q4a. Make more informed voting decisions

Q4b. Make more informed choices as a consumer

Q4c. Make more informed choices for you children

Q4d. Make more informed choices for your own health and physical well being

Q4e. Satisfy your own curiosity

Q5. Who do you trust most as a source of reliable information about the environment and the natural world?

Answer volunteered by respondent.

Q6. In general, do you agree or disagree with the following statement – I understand less and less of what scientists are doing today? (Agree, Disagree, Not Sure)

Q7. How much stress do you believe there is on the natural world today - a lot of stress, some stress, a little stress, or no stress at all?

Q8. Do you think the actions of humans are a major factor, a moderate factor, a minor factor, or no factor in impacting the natural world?

Q9. There is a consensus among scientists that many species are going extinct each year. How much of a negative impact do you think the current extinction of species has on humans – very negative, somewhat negative, slightly negative, or not at all negative?

Q10. How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun - one day, one week, one month, or one year?

Q11. Is the following statement true or false? The earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs.

Q12. What percentage of the Earth’s surface is covered by water?

1-9%
10-19%
20-29%
30-39%
40-49%
50-59%
60-69%
70-79%
80-89%
90-99%
100%
Not sure

Q13. What percentage of the Earth’s water is fresh water?

0%
1-9%
10-19%
20-29%
30-39%
40-49%
50-59%
60-69%
70-79%
80-89%
90-99%
100%
Not sure

Q14. Do you think that evolution is currently occurring? (Yes, No, Not Sure)

Q15. Do you think humans are influencing the evolution of other species? (Yes, No, Not Sure)

16. In your opinion, how important is science education to … - absolutely essential, very important, somewhat important, or not at all important?

Q16a. The U.S. Economy

Q16b. The U.S. healthcare system

Q16c. The U.S. global reputation

17. How knowledgeable would you say you are about each of the following scientific concepts … - very knowledgeable, moderately knowledgeable, or not at all knowledgeable?

Q17a. Sustainability

Q17b. Biodiversity

Q17c. Evolution

Welcome to Science4Grownups, a new website dedicated to encouraging and maintaining interest in the sciences among adults.

• Have you ever visited a science museum only to find it full of animatronic dinosaurs, interactive displays, and movie theaters, but little actual science content above the level of an grade-schooler?
• When watching science-based television shows, do you get bored after the 300th explanation of plate tectonics, bad CG visualizations, or the endless repetition of old stock footage?
• Are you a little let down after the introduction of the latest popular science book reassures you “there won’t be any math to worry about?”
• Do you find yourself checking out the natural history of a place before traveling there? Do you wish you could find a local science expert to show you around?
• Want to contribute to the body of scientific knowledge but don’t have the time to get that Ph.D. nor do you want to part with your body before you’re done with it?

If any of these scenarios fits you, then we’re here to help. Our mission at Science4Grownups is to help foster and maintain adult interest in science by providing information about 

• scientist talks, science exhibitions, and laboratory open houses
• science books, television show, and internet resources
• science travel and study opportunities
• amateur or “disruptive” science research projects

We hope you find this site to be useful resource. Like many website projects, Science4Grownups is a work in progress, so feedback is welcome. Check back frequently as we plan to grow the site with content, community features, science news, and more.