Ends of the Earth: From Polar Bears to Penguins is a 6,000-square foot travelling exhibit, that takes visitors from one end of the globe to the other, to explore the fascinating Arctic and Antarctic.
It opens at Science North in Sudbury, Ontario, on March 1, 2007, the first day of International Polar Year. On September 3, 2007, it embarks on a five-year North American tour, similar to the tour taken by Science North's first travelling exhibit, Discovering Chimpanzees: The Remarkable World of Jane Goodall.
Quark Expeditions, an adventure company which offers the widest variety of polar itineraries in the world, is supporting the Ends of the Earth exhibit with a $244,000 sponsorship. Its diverse fleet, which includes the only polar icebreaker adventure ship in Antarctica, enables Quark to offer the most departures to Antarctica.
Visitors will discover the unique nature of polar regions, the science being undertaken there, and how these regions indicate climate change on our planet. Using interactive exhibits and multimedia, they will relive polar expeditions through the eyes of great explorers, walk and slide like a penguin and learn why polar bears love the cold. They will follow the journey of the arctic tern, the only animal that migrates pole to pole, learn about the formation and size of icebergs and conduct their own cold response experiments. In The Ice Cave Theatre, they will learn about polar bears and penguins and the impact of global warming on their icy homes.
Science North will partner with Cochrane Ontario's Polar Bear Habitat attraction to produce exhibits on bear anatomy and polar bear research in Northern Ontario, for use in both Sudbury and Cochrane. This project will incorporate web camera video links between the facilities.
