New exhibit makes environmental science kid-friendly

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) - The Science Museum of Western Virginia is taking environmental science and making it kid-friendly with a brand new exhibit.

It’s called Sketchtopia and is sponsored by Virginia Tech.

It’s a piece taking visitors on a journey to learn about the air that we breathe.

WDBJ7 spoke to the exhibit’s creator about how this helps children learn about pollutants and its effect on our bodies.

“First you’ll walk through basically a big blue cube that shows you how much air you’re actually breathing every day, with different glowing cubes that show you how much the different pollutants that we really care about need to be in the air in order for it to be dangerous to us,” said Virginia Tech Associate Professor Dr. Gabriel Isaacman-Vanwertz. “And then there’s basically this screen with sort of an imaginary world where we can add things to the world that emits some of those pollutants.”

Kids at the exhibit drew cars Saturday morning that are scanned into a machine and then magically appear in the sketch.

The drawings interact with each other to show visitors the impacts pollutants have on air quality.

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