There were a couple of different related activities. I'll have Annabelle tell you more about them.
On April 24th, My brother and I attended a "Home School Day" event at The Museum of Flight. The event was held in the upper great gallery, and consisted of a few tables spaced around the floor with ample room for working. There were two activities at the event, and we were able to do both in the time allotted.
The first activity was creating a "space suit" for a marshmallow that would keep it from shrinking in the small vacuum chamber an attendant had for the demonstration. We were given latex gloves, plastic bags, tape, and a number of other things for use in the space suit. My brother and I wrapped the marshmallow in the glove, tied it tightly as possible, and put that into a plastic bag that had been taped shut. In both tests, our marshmallow survived with little to no harm or shrinkage.
The second activity involved LEGO Mindstorms robotics, using the pre-built rovers to go through various commands such as picking up only certain rocks or pushing them to designated zones. It was interesting to play with the block coding system and find the different ways each mission could be completed, as there was no wrong or right answer - there was, however, much trial and error. Since I had used LEGO Mindstorms before, I had a bit more experience, though my brother was also very useful in suggesting how to solve certain issues or tweak the code.Below is a conceptual design of the spacesuit exercise.
The kids were glad their marshmallow astronaut stood up to the vacuum test.
The robotic test was super challenging, based on the many videos I viewed that CJ shared with me. I only shared these two out of about ten.
SCIENCE SURVEY: Recently, in my online travels, I came across a story about a science knowledge quiz conducted by Pew Research Center. It's a short, 11-question, multiple choice quiz that Pew Research gave to 4,464 randomly selected U.S. adults in January of this year.
If you like, you can take the quiz and see how you stack up vs. the average American.
A full analysis of the findings can be found here:
I won't share any spoilers, but let's just say the kids (who each went 11-for-11) were mortified by the percentage of people who scored a 0 or 1 on the quiz.
There is a lesson in the poor performance of so many
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