University of AZ College of Science – Mt. Lemmon Science Tour App – Animated Videos

Mt. Lemmon Science Tour App – Collected Motion Graphics

The Mount Lemmon Science Tour is a downloadable app for your smart phone that acts as virtual tour guide, timed to accompany the drive up Mt. Lemmon (in the Santa Catalina Mountains) while providing a whole host of scientific backstory regarding this very unique region.

It functions as a portable outgrowth of the “Exploring Sky Islands” exhibit put together by the Flandrau Science Center (with help from the UA Department of Geosciences), and comes complete with an audio tour, informative slide-shows and videos that visualize the science. The musical background is provided by Tucson-based Calexico, and the band’s guitarist and vocalist, Joey Burns, performs the main narration.

Working with Shipherd Reed at the University of Arizona College of Science (who provided the direction and scientific narration) and Dennis J. Fesenmyer at the Fezlab design firm (who designed the graphics), I worked up this collection of 5 short animations that help explain complex science in an easy-to-understand way.

The topics that I animated include:

• The Basin and Range Mountain Formation
• What is the Critical Zone?
• Forest Fire History
• The Arizona Monsoon
• All Around the Water Cycle

This was a fantastic project to be included on. Not only did I greatly enjoy the collaboration with Shipherd and Dennis (both of whom did outstanding work), but I was overjoyed to have the opportunity to create educational videos explaining hard science about the highly unique “Sky Islands” region to so many people. Just too cool.