Circuitous

     photo: Space Needle's official Facebook account
STAR WARS DAY: Just had to lead today's post with a nod to one of MPA's favorite 'holidays' of the year, May Fourth, as in "May the Fourth be With You," as in Star Wars.

LOVED the graphic the Space Needle posted (above) to commemorate the occasion. Today, Annabelle sported a Boba Fett dress and a Rey (from "The Force Awakens") hairdo, while CJ wore a favorite Yoda shirt. I wore my Star Wars pajama togs as about-the-town pants with pride. 

We love us some Star Wars. 

SCIENCE FAIRY:  For a couple of hours midday, the kids manned a booth at their learning center's science fair, 

They chose to share a banana piano as their project, an idea inspired by a similar display at the recent University of Washington Engineering Days event we attended.

The drive of the musical demo involving circuits is a Makey Makey circuit board. 

By using the simple programming and wiring, you can use the circuit board to create a playable piano with most anything that will conduct electricity - including bananas (given their water content)!

 CJ and Annabelle typed up some explanations for their exhibit, including this ...

And then there's this ...

 A little explantion was in order, of course. 

Things were a little busy at the science fair and I didn't manage to take a demo video of it. Doh!

So when we got home, I had the kids recreate it. They set their display up on the copper top bar in our kitchen and weird things began to happen. Why? They soon realized that was because the copper was conducting energy between *everything.* To combat it, we put some towels under the bananas. Problem solved and lesson learned. 

Here is a demonstration of their banana piano.

https://youtu.be/XJ-yyQzjwqc

LATER, THAT DAY: After the whole science fair fun experience, we had some R&R time, which almost always includes a tabletop game. I searched the cupboards for a Star Wars themed one, given, the "May the Fourth (be with You)" day, and remembered we owned Star Wars Operation. Perfect! And not only that, as an added bonus, really the game is about trying *not* to complete a circuit! If you touch metal on metal, you're done!