 Wild World of ScienceGrades 1-5
Wednesdays, July 13, 20 and 27 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Drop In), Library Lounge Drop by to explore fun, thematic hands-on science stations that will really get you thinking. Each week’s activities will explore different science concepts and feature scientists from around the world. Sessions include guest scientists, technology and design-your-own activities. Scroll down for links and fun stuff! |  
Meta4 would like to thank Tom Chamberlain, Charles Nielsen, and Dave Stickles: Our Wild Science Scientist Volunteers. We could do all this fun stuff without you!
We would also like to thank our own student volunteers and the library volunteens for making these Wild Science Days so much FUN! |
Science Fiction to Life
Station 1: Rockets!
3, 2, 1, Blast off! You get to send both balloon rockets and bottle rockets soaring here. All while figuring out what makes them go! | Rockets - More info and things to try: Balloon Rockets How to build a Water Rocket How rockets work NASA's website - great stuff here! About rocket engines Rocket Balloon Baseball |
Station 2: Color Magic
The magic here is all in the chemistry! What colors will you make? Using tap water, soluble indicator, common acids and bases, you will hand titrate solutions to a variety of colors and pH values. | Color Magic - More info and things to try:
Don't Try This at Home! Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos Color Change Experiment How Antacids Work in Your Stomach |
Station 3: Smoke Cannon and Anti-Gravity Device
Can you float soap bubbles on a cloud? Shoot giant smoke rings from a cannon? At this station you will get to try! And discover some of the science behind these nifty tricks. | Smoke Cannon and Anti-gravity Device- More info and things to try:
Cool Experiements with Dry Ice Halloween fun with Dry Ice Smoke Ring Cannon |
Station 4: Lasers and Alien Targets
At this station we saw the inner workings of a Helium-Neon (Class IIIa) Laser and used it to make a light show. We also explored the inner workings of an actual Ruby Laser. We will watch as spinning lights create a holographic image. We may even aim a laser at an “alien.” |
Station 5: Egg in a Bottle and Expanding Critters
Here you will observe two magical events carefully and discover all about vacuums. Be amazed as we use science to put an egg into a bottle and blow up our marshmallow critters! | Egg in a Bottle and Expanding Critters- More info and things to try:
Egg in the bottle challenge Fun with a Bell Jar Vacuum Experiments video Shaving Cream in Bell Jar |
Thinkering Activities:
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Structures - July 20
Station 1: Build a Catapult
At this station, you can explore what catapults are, build one to specifications, and test the horizontal angle, vertical angle, and power or energy supplied on the “Cat-apults.” What factors in the catapult design make the load fly the farthest? The highest? |
Station 2: Egg-cellent Experiment
Eggs are amazing weight lifters! Their dome shape makes them hold up to a tremendous amount of compression force. How many books could you support on the eggs? Where else to engineers and designers use domes? Why do you think they choose them? |
Station 3: Structure Building
Using straws, legos, tape, skewers, puff balls, and many other junk-drawer goodies, students design their own structures. Students might choose to use some guidelines for building or go free style. Or students might even follow the specifications to create a balloon model of the Eiffle Tower or White House. | Structure Building - More info and things to try:
Build a Geodesic Dome Try Building with Drinking Straws Or Building Bridges with Drinking Straws You can also try Building with Skewers Structure Building Game online Play a Bridge Building game online You can even build with Pennies! One Thousand great buildings Building Slideshows |
Station 4: Fly Away!
Check out Bernoulli's Principle and Newton's Third Law in action. Just why can airplanes fly? At this station we will have a race to blow up a bernoulli bag, be amazed by floating ping pong balls, and create a paper airplane to see lift in action. | Fly Away! - More info and things to try:
Ping Pong Ball and Hairdrier Q & A About paper airplanes Paper Airplane Designs why paper airplanes fly bernoulli bag |
Thinkering Activities:
| Thinkering Activities - More info and things to try:
M.C. Escher Impossible Constructions slideshow M.C. Escher slideshow world structures slideshow with tiger stadium |
Micro to Mega - July 13
Station 1: Kitchen Chemistry
Today at Station 1 we experimented with chemical reactions by hand mixing selected household chemicals, water, and an indicator in sealed Ziploc bags. This caused some pretty exciting results in our baggies! We also tested the effect of a kind of salt when mixed with water - it got warm!  | Kitchen Chemistry: More info and things to try: Chemical Poppers Another explosive reaction More about salts Another exothermic reaction |
Station 2: Micro Worlds
At Station 2 today we messed around with a digital microscope and loupes. We found that there was much more than meets the eye for many everyday objects such as sugar and salt, insect wings, and human hair! Comparing new observations to known things is one of the fun ways that scientists make sense of their observations and the world around them.  |
Station 3: How big is a wave?
The diffraction gratings and lasers at Station 3 helped us discover that laser light travels in waves. When the waves cross over each other they make a pattern. The lines in the diffraction grating will cause the light waves to cross each other. The pattern we see on the ceiling when we shine a light or a laser through the grating shows us that light behaves as a wave and different colors have different wavelengths (because the patterns are spaced differently.)  | Wavelengths: More info and things to try:
Ripple Tank Simulation - for making water waves of different frequencies. Can make several at a time and test what happens when they cross. How Diffraction Gratings Work - great photos About Lasers - from Wikipedia |
Station 4: DNA Molecules
Today at Station 4 we constructed models of DNA to understand DNA structure and function of this infinite code as well as produce a fun product. DNA makes the building blocks of life. It is the code like a blueprint to building a house. You can imagine a strand of DNA as a string of beads, with four types of beads. The beads like to stick together in pairs. We say that the strands (beads) are complementary to each other and it is this property of DNA that allows it to copy itself whenever the body makes a new cell. | DNA Molecules: More info and things to try:
DNA Explorer in 3-D (requires Shockwave) DNA info and videos  |
Thinkering Activities:
Our Model Solar System was based on relative diameters of the Sun and planets. We used balls to represent them. Could we make a model to this scale to show distances between planets and keep it in our library? There is a neat scale model for distances in the solar system set up between the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library and the Delta Planetarium in Bay City. Look for the marker sign for Pluto on the Library outlawn (near St. Andrews St.) On Google Earth we could find where we lived and see just how far away other places around the world are. It is amazing the way we can zoom in to the neighborhood and even individual house-level of detail and zoom back out to see the whole earth. On our “Wall of Sizes,” students were encouraged to put the various activities they did today in relative size order from smallest to biggest. They encountered wavelengths of nanometers, atomic and molecular sizes in kitchen chemistry and the DNA molecule, looking closely at small items with the microscope at the cell level, all the way up to computer and hands on models of Earth, Solar System, and the Universe with the Thinkering Activities. | Thinkering: More info and things to try:
Download Google Earth Videos / Slideshows: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/index.html http://video.google.com /videoplay?docid=8842256077873416888# http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUAFqkS7y9M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSY42-QTfDM&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGWmApaeFJQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT99yhzKYWQ&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqNSQ3OQMGI&feature=related |
