Science Fair - Part 2

The science fair festivities continued the following week with an after school laser tag event in the school's gym on March 26.  From what I heard, participants got quite a workout running around obstacles and zapping their friends with laser guns.  Compared to paintball, laser tag is much less dangerous and painful.  When you get 'shot', your vest just vibrates for a few seconds.  When you get shot playing paintball . . . ouch!

            

The next pair of workshops for high school students took place on the morning of March 27.  Just like on March 22, the English and Math classes attended the workshops as a group.  The morning began in the school's gym, looking at the science of force & motion.  Marni from Elephant Thoughts led the workshop.

            

Teacher & students having fun with
small spinning tops.

She started by talking about the importance of gravity, how its immense force keeps us tied to the Earth.  She also talked about Sir Isaac Newton, an English physicist and mathematician, who formulated the Theory of Gravity.  Of course, it wouldn't be a lesson on Newton if it didn't include the famous 'Apple Incident'.  According to legend, Newton's Theory of Gravity was inspired by an apple falling from a tree.  The more comical version is that the apple fell on Newton's head.  And then there is the argument that the event never took place.  Whichever one is true is anyone's guess at this point.

            

The first gravity demonstration Marni presented to students was Galileo's Beads.  A long piece of string runs through all the beads, creating one long chain.  She simply tugged on one end, letting a few beads fall out of the cup.  Surprisingly, this motion created a chain reaction, causing the entire chain of beads to fall out in a fast but steady stream.  To see if distance plays a part in determining the speed of descent, Marni had a 'beads race' with a student volunteer.  Naturally, Donathan was the first to volunteer.  The only difference was that Marni stood on a chair.  In the end, all of Marni's beads fell to the floor first.  "The higher an object, the faster it falls," she explained, "because there is more gravity pushing it down . . . [The beads] have more time to speed up."

            

For the next demonstration, Marni dropped a ping pong ball to show that it would bounce back roughly halfway.  Adding more force, she threw it down, causing the ball to bounce back higher.  Taking it to the extreme, she placed the ball on a small rubber disk and lightly touched it.  The disk instantly inverted and launched the ping pong ball all the way up to the ceiling.  The students were surprised that the ball flew so high.  Ping pong balls and rubber discs were then handed out to the students and they played around for several minutes.  I caught some of the action on film.

            

The students needed to be careful for the next experiment because the items used were heavy.   In pairs, one student held a piece of paper while the other whacked it with two steel balls by bringing them together.  When the balls collide, the temperature between them increases to the point where it can burn through the paper and give off the smell of smoke & fire.  This works even when the paper is folded several times.

            

Jeremy, Marni, and Donathan get
ready to release an owl.

The fourth activity dealt with the center of balance.  Each student had to construct a paper owl sitting on a small wooden wheel.  Wooden weights on long sticks were attached on both sides using a glue gun.  In short, the students built owl trapeze artists.  Students then scrambled up to the gym's mezzanine to place them on a fishing line that led down to the gym floor.  Many owls completed the full descent while some fell off halfway.

            

The last and probably most exciting activity of the Forces & Motion workshop was the Body Zorb.  A large plastic ball filled with air, the Body Zorb surrounds a person's upper body, allowing them to run around and fall without being injured.  They can also tuck their legs in and let their friends roll them around.  The students had a lot of fun with the three Body Zorbs until the morning recess bell sounded.

            

Stevie introduces Light & Sound.

Looking through rainbow glasses.

After recess, the students in my group moved to the Home Economics room for the Light & Sound workshop.  Stevie, the other instructor from Elephant Thoughts, led the workshop.  She started by talking about light, its properties and extremely fast speed.  To show that visible light includes all colours of the visible spectrum, she spun a rainbow painted wheel on a stick.  Since the wheel was spinning really fast, the rainbow colours combined to produce white.  To see the reverse effect, Stevie handed out rainbow glasses for everyone to try.  When looking through the lenses, one can see rainbow lines coming from all white light emitting sources.

            

Stevie had also brought a black light to show students which objects display florescence, "the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation."  I forget the name of the liquid but it glowed a bright green under the black light.  The black light also affected the white t-shirts of several students, causing them to glow prominently.  

            

With the lights turned back on, Stevie instructed everyone to take a seat at a nearby row of tables.  Everyone was giving a piece of string and small collection of colour changing beads.  We made wrist bands.  The beads only change colour and remain that way when exposed to black light or the sun.  The change takes less than a minute.  The beads will change back to a clear white colour when they are no longer exposed to black light or the sun. 

            

The last activity dealt with sound and called on eight students to sit in a semicircle.  Stevie gave each student a sound tube, representing a musical note.  Being musically trained, I immediately noticed the tubes were organized into the C Major Scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C).  Stevie had brought several easy songs for the students to play like 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' and 'Old McDonald'.  When Stevie mentioned that she wasn't that good at conducting, I raised my hand and asked if I could take over?  She accepted my request without hesitation. 

            

I look over the music before conducting.
Picture taken by Paulette, the Art teacher.

Deviating from Stevie's prepared music, I showed students that it was possible to play many songs with just one scale.  I was able to get students to play 'Joy to the World', 'Jaws', 'Seven Nation Army', 'Top Gun', 'Hot Cross Buns', and 'Chop Sticks'.  When I ran out of songs, I reverted back to Stevie's prepared music.  From where I was standing, it looked like the students had a good time.                       

            

At the end of the science fair students and teachers were asked to fill out and submit review sheets so that Elephant Thoughts knew what worked well and what needed to be improved.  I'm not sure how everyone else felt but I know I was impressed by the variety of the workshops.  And I also got to dissect owl pellets!  I also added that I hoped Elephant Thoughts would come back in the near future.  Overall, I think the science fair was a success, exposing  young Inuit minds to the wonderful world of science. 

End of Science Fair mini-series.