Event #2

Event #2: UCLA Meteorite Collection

On May 20th , I went to UCLA Meteorite gallery which is located in the UCLA Geology building in southern campus. Although the space of the gallery was kind of small, they fit a lot of information into single space and I was able to learn a lot of new things. The UCLA collection is the largest in the West Coast containing almost three thousand samples. Also, it is the 5th largest collection of meteorites in the U.S. and the 2nd largest housed at a university. This collection includes the main masses of about 40 meteorites. Before. taking thing course and being informed about this collection I did not even know UCLA had this on campus, since I'm not too familiar with South campus since my major is Sociology. The collection contained a variety of meteorites, which included the second largest meteorite in the United States, that was named “Old Woman”. This meteorites mass is 2753 kg. Another one was a piece that came from the Seymchan meteorite that landed in Russia in 1967. The piece is very unique due to it being composed of both silicate mineral and metallic iron-nickel.  After attending this collection, I was able to take away visual representations of how nature in science can be connected with art just by ones perspective. and I would recommend a student outside this class and even South campus to come explore as well.

I think this collection falls into the first topic we discussed in Desma 9 , which was "Two Cultures". Like I mentioned before, prior to enrolling into this class and being introduced to this collection I never stepped foot in the Meteorite collection. This collection has been on this campus for years and is easily accessible, but barely recognized and in a sense ignored by majority of UCLA students. I think this was the biggest thing I was able to take after this trip to the Meteroite collection. Broadining your horizons here at UCLA seems to be more inaccessible than we really think. We're limited to our "sides" of campus that. we never take chances to see things outside of our major that we miss out on such beauty. Maybe if we explored more of the campus we would be able to find things even better and more interesting than the Meteorite collection, but first we have to break away from the idea of there being two cultures.

Sources :

1.Kelly, Kevin. “The Third Culture.” Science, American Association for the Advancement of 
2.“News and Publications | The New York Academy of Sciences.” Nyas, www.nyas.org/news-and-publications/?filter=eBriefings.
Science, 13 Feb. 1998, science.sciencemag.org/content/279/5353/992.full.
3.“Meteorite Collection.” UCLA, meteorites.ucla.edu/.

4.“UCLA Meteorite Gallery.” L.A. Weekly, www.laweekly.com/location/ucla-meteorite-gallery-7350652.

5.Vesna, Victoria. “Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov.” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmq5B1LKDg&feature=player_embedded>