Day 338: Working in the Outdoor Building at the Puyallup Fair, I might have missed this ultra-super-cool interactive display in the Department of Natural Resources exhibit had it not been for someone on the next shift drawing my attention to it. It's basically just a sandbox for grown-ups, but oh, what fun for a map lover! An overhead projector beams colours and contour lines onto the surface, and as you push the sand around or pile it up, you get a feel for how physical topography works. A pit dug over here fills with the blue of water, green forested zones grow or shrink as rocky red ridges and mountains are built up or torn down. The challenge I took was to create a mountain tall enough to maintain a snowcap (not easy with shifting sand!), and here you see the result.
