MOORPARK : Human Skull, Virtual Reality at Science Expo

With a look of curiosity but no Shakespearean drama, Mike Earnheart picked up a human skull and turned it in his hands, examining the hollow cavity where the brain once rested and the bleached-white jawline.

“He had pretty good teeth,” mused the 45-year-old nurse and part-time student.

Earnheart was one of hundreds of students who attended Moorpark College’s Science Expo ’95.

The daylong event boasted dozens of high-tech displays and science booths, which high school and college students were encouraged to explore.

With goggles and earphones strapped onto his head, Kevin Chou, a 15-year-old Moorpark High School student at the expo with his biology class, tried out a virtual reality display in the technology tent.

Oblivious to the crowds of students standing around him, he awkwardly twisted his head back and forth, reacting to the 3-D images of a computerized landscape only he could see.

“Well, it was all right but it didn’t move with you,” he said, handing the goggles to a fellow student.

While the virtual reality display and other computer animation presentations attracted large crowds, people also flocked to lectures and presentations given by the college’s science staff.

Just before lunch an instructor from the biology department allowed the strong-of-stomach to observe the dissection of a cadaver.

Students were given tours of the school’s exotic animal training center, and there were presentations by the physics and the engineering departments.

Sponsored by the college’s Math, Engineering & Science Assn., the event was meant to be educational as well as a sort of job fair for students, said Jennifer Seda, the association president.

“Well it is part career fair, but really a big part of it was meant to simply promote all the sciences,” she said.

Several four-year universities set up information booths for students interested in transferring to those schools, Seda said.

The third-year Moorpark College student who plans to study molecular biology, said the group was able to put the event together with about $8,000 from various campus organizations.