42nd annual Science Exploration Days: Day 1

Yesterday and today compromised the 42nd annual Science Exploration Days! SED is made up of exhibits and seminars all about science and technology, aimed at middle and high school students. Although Joe has participated in the past (but not recently), this year I was going to be an exhibitor for the first time! This was particularly exciting for me because I visited SED for many years when I was a kid, so I was looking forward to being on the other side of the table and giving back.

My general plan for a CIS exhibit was to set up the FLIR thermal camera and its accompanying printer, similar to what we did at the RMSC last week. Once again I lined up a few student volunteers to come and help me out (if it became busy; or to keep me company if crowds were sparse). This approach is both a blessing and a curse: students are way fun and super helpful, but they are also unreliable sometimes (sorry, students, but I've worked with you enough times to observe a pattern). Luckily I'm used to doing events alone and being self sufficient, but that doesn't help when you have tons of equipment and materials to carry and no one ends up showing up to help you load and unload your car and since you get stuck doing it by yourself it takes twice as long as expected and by the time you've just gotten everything to your table and someone finally shows up to help so you have a chance to go get dinner the food is ALL GONE. (In case you couldn't tell from that irritatingly long run-on sentence, I missed the free dinner I was counting on; and when Choate gets hungry, CHOATE GETS CRANKY.) Not cool.

Anyways, Thursday night of SED features just the exhibits and is open to the public. This is the part I went to when I was a kid. Things started off a little slow so at first it was mostly us playing in front of the camera...

...while some random guy is there. The whole place is empty, but that guy manages to be right there.

Our setup. They gave us two tables, which ended up being really handy, except for the fact that we only had one nice tablecloth.

So, a few days ago I scraped myself in a few places. Can you guess the location of one of my scabs?

Before too long, some families started showing up.

And then the guy from IS&T started taking over our shtick.

Dinosaur RAWRs in visible light...

...and in thermal IR.

Oh shoot, did I lose one of our students?
Oh no wait we found her, hiding crouched in that trash bag over there. NBD.

Then we found out what happens when you put a balloon in front of your face.
Scientific experimentation XP + 1 

Thursday night's exhibitions ran from 7-9PM, and reportedly attracted 214 children and adults. Now, we had a fabulous time (definitely better than last Saturday), but I have to admit I am disappointed by that attendance. The place should have been PACKED! Maybe I'm just remembering things differently, but I could have sworn that when I was a kid, this event was full of people and you had to wait your turn to shoulder your way in to see a table (especially a table as cool as this one was). Where was everybody?! Don't you like science??!? No wonder we have such a difficult time getting kids interested in STEM. It made me sad when I drove home past the huge "FREE SCIENCE SHOW!" signs out in the front of campus. Doesn't anybody care? (I care...)

Anyways, this isn't to say that I am disappointed in how last night went. Actually, I thought it went splendidly. The families were all genuinely interested, and the level of interaction was excellent. There were many parents encouraging their kids to interact and ask questions, and most parents got involved, themselves. We were able to explain the science behind what they were seeing, and kids experimented with the items we had at the table. I think there was a lot of value in the public display, and I'm encouraged by the learning that I witnessed taking place. There may just be hope, yet...

Meanwhile, today was promised to be the busy day, with Jr. and Sr. high schools sending in busloads of kids. But is volume enough to make an event effective? I'll discuss that in my next post, about Day 2. Stay tuned!