42nd annual Science Exploration Days: Day 2

In my previous post I detailed Science Exploration Days (SED) and the public event. Today was the portion of SED designed for middle and high school students. We were told we would be seeing upwards of 1500 students over the 3.5-hour event, so thank goodness I was to have student volunteers helping me again. But could I trust them to show up on time and actually help me set up? Well luckily setup was less of an issue, since we were able to leave almost everything securely in the Fisher gym overnight, so all I took with me was the FLIR. There was, however, going to be food before the event again which I was counting on; and thanks to a MASSIVE traffic jam (what should have taken me 40 minutes took AN HOUR AND A HALF), I had to hope that someone would be there to help me so that I could grab my breakfast and not turn into Cranky Bethy again.

Well, by the time I got there, there was one student helper. Yep, one. And not one of the ones who had been so late helped out the day before. In fact, the two returning volunteers (who carpooled) left their car lights on overnight, so they needed a jump. And they apparently waited a long time for it. And apparently the security person helping put the leads on the wrong way. And then, since that whole debacle took so long that they missed the free breakfast, they decided to take EVEN LONGER by stopping to get Dunkies on the way. Seriously?

Ranting aside... I did make it in time for breakfast, so really I wasn't that cranky (once the traffic jam road rage cooled off). The one student and I set the booth back up just in time for the first wave of students to start trickling in. Thankfully our booth was far away from the entrance, so there wasn't too much traffic before the other volunteers showed up to help.

Day 2. Our collage of example pictures stuck onto the projector screen keeps growing.

And when it rains, it pours... before long we were in super production mode. Mobs of students passed by and wanted their pictures taken. Every one of the 4 of us was occupied trying to keep up with the crowds. While there were some students that got into it and wanted to experiment, most of them felt too rushed, or simply wanted to use our exhibit as a glorified photo booth. Then there were the students who didn't care about anything, they were just there because they wanted a day out of school. The event that seemed like it was going to be the gold mine recruitment-wise ended up not really turning out as such. As I teased in my previous post about Day 1, even though we got exposure to a great number of students today, the quality of that interaction was not nearly on the level it was last night. Because of the volume of traffic and rush of the students, there wasn't enough time to explain much about what it was they were seeing, much less anything about what Imaging Science is. But, at least our CIS stickers were on the back of the pictures they received, so maybe one day they'll see that and decide they want to look into us more.

Meanwhile, at one point early on I glanced over to my left, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but... ANOTHER FLIR?! Someone else totally showed up just today and was stealing our show! One of the students, who is far more curious than she is shy, decided she would go and talk to the exhibitor to find out what the deal was. Apparently he has exhibited a FLIR in past years, and wasn't aware that we would be there with one, especially since he wasn't there last night. At least he admitted that our camera was better than his. Also, we had a printer and he didn't.... BUT, the way the traffic pattern was in the gym, all of the kids who followed the exhibits in order would see his before they rounded the corner to ours. Suddenly we were old hat copycats! But it didn't really matter, because with the crowds as they were there were more than enough students to go around, and it's not a competition anyways. Besides, it wasn't his fault (though maybe the organizers should have said something, so as to reduce redundancy - but maybe all they were concerned about was getting as many exhibitors as possible).

During one slow time, one of the students and I went on a little excursion and visited the creatures at the Ward's Natural Science table...

Tarantulas!

And snakes!

And millipedes - oh my!

And.... hissing cockroaches.... okay.
Just kidding, apparently they make great pets.

How could we possibly compete with living creatures that you can actually PLAY with? Oh, right, it's not a competition... And anyways I got my brief play time with them too so that's cool. (Did I ever mention that my parents' first date was to Wards?) Meanwhile, I wonder how well those animals deal with thousands of kids manhandling them all day. I hope they're okay.

When all is said and done, the official tally for the number of students in attendance was 1554. Wow! So in terms of pure volume, this was probably our largest outreach event of the year (not including Imagine, which is not strictly outreach focused).

At the end of the event, we were treated to a fancy and delicious lunch. With llamas.

Yeah!

All in all, a fun and hopefully-effective event. THANK YOU to the students who helped out, to the event organizers, and to everyone who came!