2008 Summer Schedule
Class Descriptions

We will select experiments from the following list depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 12. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.

• Straw Rockets: Shoot a straw out of sight with a balloon and PVC pipe.
• Water Bottle Rockets: Launch 2-liter bottles with air pressure and then with air pressure plus water. Improve the design by making it more aerodynamic to see how far it will go.
• Kimoto Flyers: Make an aircraft and try flying it by hand. Then add weight to balance it and a rubber band launcher to make it fly high and do barrel rolls in the sky.
• Balloon Rockets: Screaming balloons attack from every direction.
• Puddle Jumpers: Experiment with the propellers and methods of spinning these folk toys to see how high they fly.
• Helium Balloons: Make a helium balloon hover, then experiment with ways to make the balloon travel through a maze of hula-hoops.
• Bubble-ology: Make gigantic bubbles that you can stand inside.
• Smoke Rings: Experiment with large and small smoke ring generators.
• Hover Craft: Make hovercrafts and race them down an inclined plane. Fly a leaf-blower powered hovercraft in the paved area.
• Paper Airplanes: Launch the gliders from a huge helium balloon and modify them so that they will glide in a spiral.
• Windmills: Make a windmill and discover how much wind is necessary to lift a cookie up to your mouth.
• Frisbees: Start with a flying ring and then add a flat disk, a dished disk, and finally some weight to discover the important properties of a Frisbee.
• Rainbow Makers: Create rainbows all over the lab and then make a mask that creates rainbows wherever you look.
• Dry Ice: Make fog, bubbling potions, and screaming pieces of metal with this versatile material.
• Hovering Magnets: Make a pen hover in mid air and then spin it. The record time is 12 minutes!
• Solar Furnaces: Super-size lenses will melt a penny in 30 seconds and will make a two-by-four burst into flames in about one second..

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Water is Good . . .
Water is Your Friend

We will select experiments from the following list depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 12. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.

• Liquid Nitrogen: Discover how marshmallows, leaves, bananas, balloons, and rubber balls change when they are completely frozen. Then make ice cream using the liquid nitrogen.
• Hero's Fountain: This weird thing makes a stream of water appear to defy gravity!
• Glow Sticks: Discover how to make them glow very bright.
• Hot Cold Fizzy: It changes color, temperature, makes noise, and then it pops its bag!
• Cartesian Divers: These critters move up and down in the bottle as if by magic.
• Sinking Rafts: Discover the best way to send one billion cheeseburgers to starving people across the ocean.
• Weird Water: Hold a full cup of water upside down without it falling out, make water flow uphill, and create a musical instrument.
• Squirt Guns: Discover how to make your squirt gun shoot the farthest and the highest.
• Dry Ice: Make fog, bubbling potions, and screaming pieces of metal with this versatile material.
• Secret Message: Create pictures or messages that appear, disappear, and reappear again.
• GAK and Slime: Yes, there is nothing like gooey, slimy, and stretchy stuff!
• Candle in a Jar: Give your candle a vacation cruise and then trap it under a jar... will it survive?
• Windmills: Make one of the most efficient windmills ever invented and then use it as an excuse to run all over the place and scream while your mom is on the phone!
• Gyroscopes: These things not only stay level, they can also defy gravity! Make one for yourself and scribble all over it to see how the colors mix when it spins.
• Water Rockets: Launch two-liter water bottles and discover ways to make them go higher (by adding more weight?).

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We will select experiments from the following list depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 12. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.

• Roller Coasters: Create a roller coaster having loop-de-loops, jumps, and spirals of death.
• Mountain Rescue: Discover how easily one person can lift another with rock-climbing equipment.
• Bridge Failure: Build a popsicle stick bridge, load it up with huge weights, and then play back the disaster in slow motion on video.
• Periscope: Make a light-bender so you can see over walls and around corners.
• Fire Drills: Discover how to start a fire with a bow and arrow (along with a skateboard wheel).
• Liquid Crystal Heat Conduction: Discover how to make yourself invisible to infrared cameras.
• Charcoal Heat Bags: Create a way to keep your hands warm for many hours.
• Catapults: Build a catapult and use it to launch stuff all over the lab.
• Water Balloon Launchers: Assemble a tower and use it to launch water balloons at evil Mister Fred.
• Spin Art: No science class is complete without splattering paint all over the place!
• Earthquakes: Build a Lego castle and then see if it will survive a huge earthquake.
• Light Bulb Filaments: It'll smoke, it'll glow... but will it make flames?
• Foam Cutters: Cut foam into 3-dimentional shapes and create a colorful sculpture.
• Film Can Cannons: A little spark plus a little breath spray and away it goes!
• Shrinky Dinks: An artistic way to recycle those plastic containers.

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Scary Experiments

We will select experiments from the following list depending on weather and ability of the students. We reserve the right to change the subjects as necessary to meet the needs of the children. The age group for all programs is 5 - 12. All students will be together for the introduction and story part of the lesson, but for most of the experiments they will be split into two groups by age.

• Lasers and Mirrors: Give yourself 1000 eyes, create the illusion of a tunnel deep into the earth, make a laser show, and instantly create 10 of anything you can draw.
• Tesla Coil: An absolutely amazing, ear-splitting, eye-popping device that is great for showing what high voltage and high frequency electricity can do. Use it to create a Medusa head with snakes of electricity coming out of the eyes and hair.
• Static Electricity: Our large Van de Graaff generator can create up to about a million volts of lightning. Use the small ones to make your hair stick straight out and to levitate pie tins.
• Electric Lights: Discover how to make lights brighter and dimmer, what materials conduct electricity, and how to make a motor change speed and direction.
• Electric Generators: Use hand-crank generators to run lights, bells, motors, and fans and see how much energy each consumes.
• Sound Effects: Discover how to amplify very small sounds into incredibly loud sounds without using any electricity.
• Glove Bagpipes: I bet parents really hate this one! A latex glove carefully placed on a tube can create the most marvelously loud dying-moose sound when inflated.
• Exploding Bubbles: Imagine ordinary looking bubbles that explode with a slight whisper sometimes, and other times they make a loud bang!
• Magnetic Creatures: Completely mess up a color TV, make heavy pieces of metal fall real slowly, and create a magically moving alien and draw a place for him to live.
• Mirror Masks: You can see out but they cannot see in!
• Soda and Mentos: Create fountains of soda as tall as a two-story building.
• Marshmallow Cannons: Shoot marshmallows around corners!
• Bull Roar: Swing this over your head to scare off intruders.
• Laser Sound Waves: Make moving pictures on the wall with just your voice.
• Echoes: Create loud echoes and waves of all sorts with a slinky spring and two cups.
• Dry Ice: Make fog, bubbling potions, and screaming pieces of metal with this versatile material.

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