Hello friends! Welcome to another episode
of Amaze Your Brain at Home. My name is
Julian. I'm a TECH Truck educator with
the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.
This week it's all about paleontology
the scientific study of ancient life. Now
in this video, I will show you how you
get to be your own paleontologist with
your own Museum that you get to curate
with your own specimens using a website
called Tinkercad. Tinkercad is a computer
aided design website that allows you to
experiment with 3d modeling and 3d
design. Now before we get into all of
that my friend Kenzie who really likes
animals especially ancient animals is
going to help me out with this
conversation a little bit and explain
why paleontology is important and why
it's important for all rooms of science.
How about it Kenzie?
Thanks, Julian. So,
paleontology is so important because it
tells us how life has formed over time.
So the life that we have today, it took
some time to get there and it didn't
always look the same. So we use
paleontology to learn more about life.
Today we use it for taxonomy, which is
how we classify different organisms,
this could include plants and animals as
well. It also helps scientists understand
how different rocks and minerals have
formed over time. Another thing to think
about is that extinction isn't just a
thing of the past a lot of animals are
actually really close to becoming
extinct. So I want to show you one of my
favorite animals in the world. I actually
have an illustration from 1956. So this
right here is called a thylacine so this
animal actually had ancestors that looked
very similar to it. They were very large
marsupials with very similar stripes but
they made this guy look pretty puny.
Something that I really encourage you
guys to look into is there's actually
footage of these animals in zoos in the
early 1900s.
You can see them walking around, they
have a really wide mouth, there's all
different kinds of really
cool footage that we actually get to
learn from today. So even though we
didn't get to see these animals back in
their prime, we have some video footage
that scientists like to study. Wouldn't
it be nice if we had video footage of
animals like dinosaurs or other things
that we'd like to study? So that's why we
have to look to fossils or paleontology
to learn how they lived back then.
Thank you Kenzi! I've been thinking a lot about
what Kenzie said when it comes to
extinct species and what we a scientist
can do in order to learn more about them.
Paleontologists use a variety of
different tools and techniques in order
to further their research. One of which
includes 3d scanning and 3d printing. How
does a 3d scanner work? One of the
methods that paleontologists use to
capture a 3d scan is by using a laser
scanner. A laser scanner uses a
combination of cameras and laser
projectors in order to capture the shape
of an object. This is especially helpful
when paleontologists are handling
delicate specimens or if they want to
share their specimen with another
scientist or researcher. The Triceratops
that you see on your screen is an
example of a 3d model that TECH Truck
was able to download and 3d print using
one of the 3d printers on hand. Cool huh?
What if there was a way for you to be
your own paleontologist and to curate a
museum with your own extinct or
ancient animals? I'm going to show you
that today by using Tinkercad. Tinkercad
is an online CAD software,
CAD standing for computer-aided design,
by using simple shapes and learning how
to manipulate them and being able to
import 3D models of ancient and extinct
animals you can create
your own virtual museum. What we're
looking at right now is my version. What
we need your help with is completing the
scavenger hunt list that is uploaded
along with this video on the Amaze Your
Brain at Home website. Once you have
completed this scavenger hunt, I want
you to make your own virtual museum. If
you would like to be your own
paleontologist and curate your own
virtual museum, stay tuned for a quick
crash course on Tinkercad. Start off by
opening a browser and going to Tinkercad
dot com(Tinkercad.com) once you do that you will either click "sign in" if you have an account
already or you can create an account by
clicking on "join now", make sure to obtain
parents permission before doing so. Once
you have logged in, click on "create new
design". Once you have your design open go
ahead and click on the name that is
already pre-populated and change it to
something that you like. So I'm going to
change it to "Julian's Museum" and click
somewhere off to the side. You are going
to start off by learning the basics of
the mechanics of Tinkercad. Start off by
clicking-and-dragging using your
left-click on your mouse click and drag
the box onto the screen right in the
middle. When you let go of the mouse you
will see a bunch of things pop up around
the box. Click and drag one of the white
boxes to see what happens. You can change the
shape and the size of your box. You can
also click somewhere on the red part
using your left-click on your mouse
click and drag to move your object. You
can also click and drag on the center
white box so you can make it really tall
or really short. You can also hover over
the little arrows on the side if you
would like to rotate it this way or you
can rotate it that way also.
And then finally hover your mouse over
the cone that's right in the middle hold
and click on your left mouse to drag it
up or below your work plane. You can also
change the perspective or the way you
see your workspace by holding down on
the right click button hold down on it
and drag to change your perspective to
see how you can see your model
differently. If you would like to return
how you were before originally click on
the little house on the side right there.
Now that now that you have learned the
basic mechanics of how to use Tinkercad
let's go find some 3d models of animals
to put in our museum. Click on the
Tinkercad logo in the top left corner.
Once you have done that click on the
magnifying glass in the top right corner.
Click on the show media part where it
says designs or people. You can either
type in a "TECH Truck 3D Museum" or "PerotMuseum"
but make sure that they are all
one word with no spaces, then hit enter.
Now you will see several different
options for starting your museum. The
file that says "All 3D Museum Animals" has
all of the animals that
I have available on Tinkercad. I also
have "My 3D Museum" available in case you
just want to complete the scavenger hunt.
If you would like to copy the animals
that I have posted on to your Museum,
click on the file, and then click on "copy
and tinker". It might take a few minutes
for all of the files to load onto your
workspace. Once all the files have been
loaded, then you have your animals ready
to go. If you would like to select some
of the animals to move out of the way so
you have room on your workspace just use
your left click mouse to click and drag
over so you can highlight all of these
items here and then you can move them
out of the way so that you have more
space to work on. Start off by building a
floor, maybe build some stairs, build some
kind of way to support all of the
specimens that you have available and
just have fun with it. And make sure to
tag your museum with "3D Museum" or "Perot
Museum" so that we can also get to see
how your museums turned out. I even was
able to put a Thylacine in my museum
that I created so that other people can
learn about this extinct species. I would
also like to thank Duke University for
providing some of the 3D models
available on - as well as
- Thank you guys for
joining me on this episode of Amaze Your
Brain at Home. Again my name is Julian
and thank you to my friend Kenzi for
helping out as well. See you guys next
time, bye!
