Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
following a scheme proposed by the designers Charles and Ray
Eames, he goes progressively by factors of ten to show us the
whole Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way and the Universe.
Every astronomical body is meticulously detailed. You can lose
yourself in them. It's one of the best tools I know of to explain the
scale and nature of the Universe to children. Isaac Asimov
described it as 'the most imaginative representation of the universe
that I have ever seen, or could have conceived of. I could
have wandered through it for hours, seeing something new at
every turn that I hadn't observed before.' Versions of it ought to
be available throughout the country - for stirring the imagination,
for inspiration and for teaching. But instead, Mr Awad cannot
give this exhibit to any major science museum in the country. No
one is willing to devote to it the floor space needed. As I write, it
still sits forlornly, crated in storage.
The population of my town, Ithaca, New York, doubles to a grand
total of about 50,000 when Cornell University and Ithaca College
are in session. Ethnically diverse, surrounded by farmland, it has
suffered, like so much of the northeast, the decline of its
nineteenth-century manufacturing base. Half the children at Beverly
J. Martin elementary school, which our daughter attended,
live below the poverty line. Those are the kids that two volunteer
science teachers, Debbie Levin and Ilma Levine, worried about
most. It didn't seem right that for some, the children of Cornell
faculty, say, even the sky wasn't the limit. For others there was no
access to the liberating power of science education. Starting in the
1960s, they made regular trips to the school, dragging their
portable library cart, laden with household chemicals and other
familiar items to convey something of the magic of science. They
dreamed of creating a place for kids to go, where they could get a
personal, hands-on feel for science.
In 1983 Levin and Levine placed a small ad in our local paper
inviting the community to discuss the idea. Fifty people showed
up. From that group came the first board of directors of the
Sciencenter. Within a year they secured exhibition space in the
first floor of an unrented office building. When the owner found a
paying tenant, the tadpoles and litmus paper were packed up