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[Monica]: Stuck at home? Let's do science!
Hi scientists, I'm Monica from the California Science Center.
[Phone chimes]
Oh! My friend just texted me.
He wants me to meet him outside.
That's Dr. Chuck, Curator of Life Sciences here at the California Science Center.
And he's an expert on five senses and how to use them to make observations.
Hi Dr. Chuck
[Dr. Chuck]: Hi
[Monica]: Can we ask you a question?
[Dr. Chuck]: Sure
[Monica]: How do we use our five senses to make observations in our neighborhoods?
[Dr. Chuck]: Oh wow, that's that's a great question. How do we use our five senses?
Well obviously our five senses are touch, taste, sight, smell and...
[Monica]: And hearing?
[Dr. Chuck]: Hearing! Hearing, that's right.
So there's all kinds of things. We're here in the garden at the... at the Science Center today
and we have lots of interesting things to see just with sight.
We can see that there are all kinds of different flowers that are here.
This is a plant – these are all native species by the way – this is a plant called hummingbird sage.
You can see from the shape of the flowers that it's ideal for a long hummingbird's beak
to fit inside and get the nectar,
but you can see the beautiful purple color.
And over here, the ones I was just looking at when you came up.
These are called um, Matilija poppies.
And you can see they have a beautiful... they almost look like a fried egg, don't they?
So using our sight, again we can see the white and the beautiful yellow center of the flower.
As we go down in the garden, let's see what else we can find.
Oh here's another great plant for smell.
This sort of wispy plant here is called sagebrush – California sagebrush.
It was also called "cowboy cologne".
And the reason for that is if you gently run your fingers along it
[Sniffs]
and smell, again it's got a wonderful smell to it.
Some people don't like it, but you know that it varies.
The legend, the reason it has that name is that the... they said
cowboys would use to use that too... so that they couldn't take showers or baths very often,
they'd use that and rub that on themselves so they'd smell a little better when they came to town.
So again, another plant that's got a great...
[Sniffs]
mmm, a great smell.
So that's a lot of fun.
Let's see what else we can find.
Right now, you probably can't hear it in the video, but I'm hearing
a little sort of tick tick tick sound
that is probably a hummingbird.
So again, we can listen for birds, different kinds of birds, hummingbirds,
or big ones, they make some very unusual calls,
but we have all kinds of different birds that we can listen for.
And of course, we just listen for the sounds that are around us, right?
What else can I hear? I can hear the sound of the freeway which isn't too far away.
So there's those kind of human-made sounds, but natural sounds as well.
We may get lucky, we may see or hear a squirrel.
We have fox squirrels that live here in the garden.
And sometimes they make funny little chattering sounds.
Oh here's another – notice on here we can see differences in the colors of these leaves.
See how some of the leaves are very, very dark.
Some are very light green.
Notice the stem changes color right here.
These... this is the new growth. This is the growth that just happened so far this year.
And these are older leaves. And so all of these bright colored leaves are... are brand new
They're just, they're just sprouting.
Here we can see more of the the "catkins," as they're called. What's left of the flowers from the oak tree.
And so eventually again, they will form...
um, we can come back in a few months, in all of these places
we're likely to see acorns starting to bloom.
Alright, let's keep going and see what else we can find.
One other thing about our garden here, if you do get a chance to come here
on bright sunny days, we have a whole panel here about this.
We have Western fence lizards that live here in our gardens.
They don't really live much places around here yet.
We think this is the only population of them in Exposition Park.
They're slowly starting to spread out, but you can find them.
And when you're walking through here on a bright sunny day,
you can find them out sunning in bright places and warming up and getting ready to do their thing.
We've sort of just passed through our oak woodland.
Um, we're walking now down towards the desert and we'll see some very different sort of plants down here
that we don't necessarily see on a regular basis, unless you get to go out to the desert.
But as you see we start to come down here we see more shrubby things.
There's a great plant up there. Another one of our California natives...
Brittle Bush – sort of grayish leaves with the bright yellow Daisy looking flowers.
This tree we're standing under is another beautiful desert tree.
This is called the honey mesquite. And this tree, if I can find a close enough branch...
Ahh, let's see if I can gently pull this down.
Here's sort of a touch opportunity, but this tree has very hard sharp spikes.
And you might wonder why? So why would something have spikes like this?
Well in a case like this, of course, it's for protection.
So that helps keep organisms, animals that would try to eat this plant, keeps them away,
but these are very, very, hard sharp thorns that it has.
Alright, so I hope you enjoyed our little tour of the native plant gardens
here around the parking structure at the California Science Center.
Just to sort of wrap up, we have a little activity that you can use and download.
It's a – it's a bingo sheet where you are gonna go out and look for different things in your own neighborhood.
Looking for sights, touches, taste, scents, sounds.
Of course with tastes, be careful when you taste things.
We don't want to put anything in our mouth that... if you don't know what it is don't taste it, type of thing.
So we want to be careful there, but we can see other things that are tasting things
like an animal eating food they found on their own.
So we don't have to be the ones tasting. We can observe other things tasting.
But this is a fun little way that you can use to go out and use your five senses in your own neighborhood.
Enjoy!
[Monica]: I hope you enjoy bingo and are feeling a little less stuck at home.
See you next time!
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Be sure to visit our website Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. for more Stuck at Home Science Activities.
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