Weekending in Pictures
by Jennifer Cooper, posted on April 30th, 2012 in Features, Science Fun
picture from the USA Science + Engineering Festival
lessons in salt + sugar dough circuitry
Homopolar Motors
We had a great time in DC this weekend at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. It was pretty much non-stop people at the booth the entire time of the festival.
I knew about the festival for about a year. I got the call last summer, but didn’t start putting ideas together for the table until a couple months ago.
I developed four criteria for selecting activities:
1. they had to have some sort of science or engineering behind them
2. kids needed to be able to make the ‘toys’ at home
3. they needed to be inexpensive
4. they had to be fun
Here’s what we came up with:
Light up play dough sculptures
Thaumatropes
Homopolar Motors
Magnetic Marble Run
I created signs for each station that listed the project, what kids learn from it, what you’d need to make it, and steps for doing it at home. I tried to keep the signs as simple as possible so parents could snap photos of them with their smart phones—saves on printing, and they’re less likely to lose a photo than a slip of paper, right?
The whole thing went surprisingly well and even though I crashed today in the form of a two hour nap, I’d say it was totally worth it.
Before I go though, here’s an experiment from one of my favorite booths at the festival: What happens when you subject Marshmallow Jim to a vacuum and then reintroduce air pressure? Let’s find out, shall we…
Cindy H Says:
Jennifer Cooper Reply:
May 1st, 2012 at 10:19 pm
I TOTALLY loved it. Geeks rule the world. And I think that was pretty evident this weekend!
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