Event Phone: 204-987-8850

SCIENTIFIC PRESENTATIONS FOLLOWED BY A Q & A SESSION
January 22nd and/or March 25th from
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

January 22nd – The Kon-Tiki Expedition of 1947
Thor Heyerdahl, a young Norwegian student, thought people from South America may have drifted to the islands of French Polynesia on primitive rafts. Scientific opinion held that the islands had been colonized from further west. To test his idea, Heyerdahl built a balsa wood raft, cast off from Peru and drifted to where the sea would take him. Indeed, it took him to the islands exactly as he expected. Thus, he proved that drifting from South America to the islands could have taken place. Thus, he proved that it could have happened, although not that it really did happen.

March 25th – “How Old Is That?”
We often wonder how old things are. Perishable items often have “Best Before” dates. Imagine buying a car without knowing its age. What about people? We have learned a lot from fossil bones of earlier people. Biblical scholars have calculated that creation occurred in 4004 B.C. What about our world, namely planet earth? Scientists argue that our planet is much older than 6000 years. How can we tell how old something is? We often estimate the ages of old things from layers of rocks and especially from radioactivity in samples.