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Geolab, a journey to the centre of the Earth

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Geolab is a permanent exhibition dedicated to Geology. A place designed to tell how our planet works, how Umbria was born, and what are the mechanisms that are at the basis of its evolution. At Geolab is: “forbidden not to touch”. 

Geolab is more than a museum: it is almost a lab, which in San Gemini hosts several interactive machines
explaining things in a funny way, but above all, it invites the visitor to observe and experiment with a scientific method.

 

Let’s Discover the Earth

The visit unwinds through five halls along a path that leads the visitor from the discovery of the Earth’s structure to the landscape reading, through the main geological outcrops of Umbria.
The first room opens with the discovery, thanks to special lens, that the surface of the Earth is divided into large plates: a game, that allows to disassemble and reassemble the planisphere of 150 million years ago, and a wheel of time separating Africa and South America that, by showing plaques’ movements in the past, help to understand how Oceans were born.
Between the first and the second room you will enter in a great Earthy globe, where you can see how it is made the inner part of our planet – the core. Afterwards, with the help of an interactive plastic, the visitor can find out how mountains were born,  why earthquakes strike and where volcanoes open.
With the third room you get into to the geodynamic events of the Mediterranean area and Italy. A game allows you to go back in time and find out how our Peninsula had been formed: answering the questions correctly, you can make three plastics raise, and they represent as many moments in Italian geological history.
The fourth is dedicated to Umbria: here you can try to lift the Apennine from the sea and see erosion phenomena. In the centre, a large plastic with an aquarium offers, at a glance, both the geological history of the Region and the rock formation environments that form it, along with rocks specimens themselves. A space is dedicated to fossils and another to the view of Umbrian rocks secrets under a microscope.
In the last hall, made up of a deconsecrated church, you can finally get to know the main phenomena and the geological sites in Umbria.
Some examples: the recording, with a seismograph, of the jumps of visitors introduces the study of earthquakes; an active plastic explains how San Gemini mineral water forms. Digging into a tub filled with plastic balls, you can recover fossil bones, then identify the ancient Umbrian animal now extinct to which they belonged.

Educational Labs

Geolab is a space where it is possible to directly handling exposed materials. To this feature, creators wanted to add direct experience and scientific research. Laboratory activity is structured in different thematic paths: 
Pages written in the rock: the rocks are the only evidence of an ancient and slow history that perpetuates to present, made of settlements, eruptions and upheavals within the Earth. Interestingly, it is their study and their recognition based on their macroscopic characteristics: colour, hardness, weight and texture.
Fossils: Science that studies past life, Paleontology, has the power to bring us back in time, into a world of strange animals and plants. Fossils are the only element to understand the eternal pulsation of life and the Planets’ eternal changing.
Description and representation of landscape, geography and topography: study of the shapes of landscape in order to construct a map.
The adventures of Teo the trilobite and Minnie the ammonite: through the story of the adventures of the trilobite Teo and those of the tyrant ammonite, children will discover the various evolutionary phases of living beings, including fossils (by colouring and cutting them) and their position in the different Geological Eras drawn on the carpet.
Home Science: The thread of this lab is the story of daily experiences through the eyes of the scientist. With a series of experiments, you will be able to know some phenomena that, although seemingly obvious, introduce us to the laws of Physics that regulate them. 

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