Take a Virtual Tour

Welcome to Underground Adventure! Here you'll take a Virtual Tour of the exhibition at The Field Museum and learn all about the amazing world beneath your feet. What's so amazing, you ask? Well, for starters:

• Without soil, there would be no jeans.
  That's right! Jeans are made of cotton denim stitched together with cotton thread. Their blue color comes from indigo dye. Cotton and indigo come from plants that need soil to grow.
• Without soil, we would have no aluminum cans.
  Aluminum starts out locked inside the soil, in an ore called bauxite. Aluminum can also be recycled to make new aluminum products, like cooking pots, airplanes, or new cans.
• Without soil, we'd have no penicillin.
  Penicillin is a natural bacteria-killer that's made by a mold that grows in soil. Thousands of lives are saved each year by penicillin and other medicines that were discovered in soil organisms.
• Without soil, we couldn't even eat breakfast!
  Everything from the wheat in cereal to the oranges in orange juice to the animal proteins in milk, bacon, and eggs were nourished by the soil and what grows in it. Even a ceramic plate is made of a type of soil. No soil, no breakfast and no plates from which to eat.

Want to learn more? Get started on your Underground Adventure Virtual Tour! You'll never look at soil the same way again!

 

Helpful Hints

The Virtual Tour will appear in a pop-up window. Make sure you set your web browser to enable pop-ups so you can take the quiz!

You will need the current version of Flash to take the tour.
You can download it for free here.

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