The Boone Adventures: California Academy of Sciences

Today, Trevor and I went to the California Academy of Sciences. This place is awesome! If you ever have a chance to visit San Francisco, this is a place you must visit. Great educational fun for all ages.

There's a 4 story rain forest dome. It's so cool! When you first walk in, you immediately feel the humidity in the air and see beautiful birds and butterflies fluttering across the dome.

There are also leaf cutting ants. It's so cool! You can see the ants actually cutting leaves and carrying them down. These are are super cool. There are parasite flies that lays eggs on the ants while they are transporting leaves, because the leaf blocks part of the ant's vision. So they actually have what are appropriately called guard ants that stand on the leaves and defend off the parasite flies.

Then there are exhibits about CO2, climate warming, sustainable living, and how you can reduce your carbon foot print. The California Academy Sciences building is LEED certified. The building utilizes many different technologies to be environmentally friendly:

- It has radiant floor heating - there are tubes under the concrete floor running warm water to heat the building
- It is insulated with recycled denim
- It has floor to ceiling glass walls and sky lights to utilize the sun light
- The roof has solar energy panels that provide up to 10% of the Academy's electricity needs prevent the release of 405,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emission into the air
- The roof is also a living roof - it house 1.7 million native California plants; this also helps to keep the building cool.

It has a gorgeous aquarium where you can learn about and visit Nemo, Dory, and friends. They can be found in the Philippine Coral Reef exhibit.

There's also a planetarium, which we were able to visit. You have to get there early and stand in line to get tickets. It is a free showing, but with limited seats. The tickets are given out on a first come first serve basis. Trevor and I arrived there at about 9:40am but we didn't want to spend half an hour waiting in line. We wanted to get right to the exploring.