Nano Days! Informal Nano Science Education

Here is a video of me on Syracuse's Bridge Street morning show from 2012!

Real Life Quidditch!

Syracuse University Quidditch at the MOST
"Block that quaffle!"

The last couple years the MOST has shown Harry Potter movies in our IMAX Omni-theater.  We have tried the create a number of different incentives to get the community interested.  These include Harry Potter planetarium shows, workshops, and demos, and getting the local bars to sell butterbeer, but today may have been my favorite.  Today we had quidditch!

Harry Potter fans know quidditch as the made-up game in JK Rowling's Harry Potter world.  Wizards and witches fly around on broom sticks and try to score points by throwing a quaffle through hoops, while being careful not to get knocked off their brooms by bludgers.  Meanwhile the seekers try to catch the snitch to win the game.

Muggle Quidditch is the real life counterpoint invented at Middlebury college in Vermont in 2005.  Since then college and high school students across America and Canada have formed teams, 100 of which compete at the International Quidditch World Cup in NYC every year.  Competitors still have to keep a broom between their legs, and seekers have to chase a human snitch.

Syracuse University Quidditch at the MOST

Our marketing department contacted Syracuse University's team, and they agreed to play outside the museum to promote our IMAX.  Today was a cold and drissly day, but they came anyway, and played with smiles on their faces.  In fact, I don't think I've ever seen people enjoying a sport so much before.  Their smiles were contagious, and I think those of us watching were tempted to start our own team.  I don't know how much the weather affected the attendance, but the MOST employees were just about the only ones there.  I nice exception was a family with two young boys who watched from their car.  It was pretty funny watching the expressions on people's faces who came up to ask what was going on.  "Quidditch?"

  I certainly enjoyed the experience myself, but I suppose the question we should be asking is "Was this effective?"  I'm not sure I have a good answer for this.  Events like this, and the other promotions we've run do not bring in a lot of people.  Some events at the MOST bring in hundreds or even a thousand people.  The planetarium shows, demos, and collaborations like this don't do much to increase attendance for the day.  Even so, I think it is important for museums and science centers to keep trying new things to connect with the community and bring in visitors.  As long as we are careful not to spend too much our resources on these projects, they may be worth it.  They always connect with someone.  The SU students will now appreciate the MOST more, and hopefully become advocates for science museums.  The two boys watching from their car will probably remember this quidditch game for years.  Events like this remind me once again that working in the informal science education field is always full of surprises and great experiences.

Syracuse University Quidditch at the MOST
"Catch that snitch!"

Syracuse University Quidditch at the MOST

Syracuse University Quidditch at the MOST

Syracuse University Quidditch at the MOST
"Pass that quaffle"

Sun-Earth Day 2012 Transit of Venus

June 5th was NASA's Sun-Earth Day! This was a celebration of the 2012 Transit of Venus.  A transit is when something passes through something else, and in this case the planet Venus was passing across the face of the sun. Since it is dangerous to look at the sun directly and because Venus won't appear to transit the sun again for over 100 years, my fellow science educators and I decided to become part of the celebration. We often teach people about astronomy at the MOST, but this was the first time our team tried to have a public viewing event. The MOST is located in downtown Syracuse and is surrounded by tall buildings and plenty of light pollution. Since this event involved the sun and would take place in a area of the sky we could see from outside the building, we knew it could work. We started putting the event together a few months beforehand and spreading the word. We put together a number of activities to do inside, as well as a live webcast of the event from Hawaii, and arranged to have sun-safe telescopes set up outside. One of our volunteers brought a couple and the Syracuse Astronomical Society brought the rest.

For my part, I helped organize a computer lab with Sun-Earth Day videos from NASA, gave two planetarium shows that focused on debunking 2012 "end of the world" nonsense, and a station that tough people how to write numbers like the Ancient Maya. The Ancient Maya were Venus experts, and calculated their data with a very different number system than the decimal system we use today.

As June 5th approached the skies grew overcast and I came down with the flu. The event at the MOST started at 6pm, and I arrived a few hours earlier to finish setting up. I was also thinking that I might have to leave before the event, and stay home sick. When I arrived, however, I learned that people had been calling the museum non-stop. I thought that because of the bad weather we might get thirty people to show up, but we already had more than 80 reservations! Staying home sick was not going to be an option. A short trip to the pharmacy later and I was ready to give it my best.

Venus is covered by thick clouds.  Image: NASA

 Our event ended up succeeding beyond our expectations. The weather cleared up, the astronomy society did a great job with their telescopes, our activities were a hit, and over 150 people participated! I really wasn't sure I would have a chance to actually see the transit. While inside I was enjoying teaching people about the ancient Maya counting system, which is a base 20 instead of a base 10 system. My first guest was a mathematician and it certainly didn't take him long to catch on. I was also impressed by an elementary student who loved numbers.  He did a great job taking the time he needed to learn the system.  If you are curious about the Maya system, you can learn it from the Calendar in the Sky website. I was fortunate to recently participate in a 2-day training at the NYC Natural History Museum run by the Calendar in the Sky people. If you go to the resource section of the website, there are a number of lesson plans you can view or download. A couple of these will teach you about the counting system. The planetarium shows were both almost filled to capacity. There wasn't a lot of questions asked, unfortunately, but the shows went well. Often groups with a lot of adults don't ask questions. If I hadn't been sick, maybe I could have coaxed a little more out of them, but I think most everybody enjoyed the show.

The surface of Venus if you could look
through the clouds.
Image: NASA

 And now for the best part! Just as I finished the second planetarium show and the event was ending, my girlfriend surprised me by showing up. She had already seen the transit and urged me to get outside to the telescopes while there was still time. The sun was pretty low in the horizon and most of the scopes were already taken down. Luckily, I was able to look through one just before the sun went behind a phone pole or something. In fact, I may have been the last one to see it that day.

I did go home and spend the night with a nasty fever and little sleep, but I'm still glad I worked the event and that Emily showed up to bring me outside. I will never again have a chance to see this happen, but now I can remember it and talk of it for the rest of my life.

The day before the event I went on Channel 9's Bridge Street morning show to promote Sun-Earth Day as well as other things happening at the MOST.  If your curious, you can watch the clip below.

 

 I was also on Bridge Street a couple months ago to promote our Nano Science Week. You can watch that video below, too.

Erie Canal Village Memory & ASTC Connect

ASTC logo

If you have ever gone to a science museum and looked into their memberships, you probably noticed that buying one membership allows you access to over 300 other museums. In fact, I wrote a blog article about this. The reason you can get into these other places is because they are all part of the Association of Science & Technology Centers or ASTC. ASTC is a great resource for informal science educators. They publish an inspiring magazine called Dimensions, host a big annual conference, and have some great resources on their website. I recently started checking out the ASTC Connect portion of their site, which has online workshops. The first one, called Science Center Basics is great resource for museum educators, particularly for newer workers. The workshop is described as a "self-paced tutorial" that "introduces key aspects of science center philosophy and practice." The goal is to have the student learn more about their museum and visitors, and to use this information to better understand their job. The first activity relates to thinking about the importance of museums in your own life and asks the student to write about their first museum experiment. I enjoyed this assignment and hope my memories will spark some of your own. Enjoy!

What is your first memory of a museum?

The Erie Canal Village in Rome, NY

The first museum I can remember visiting was the Erie Canal Village in Rome, NY on a 4th grade school field trip. I don’t recall the museum portion itself, but I do have some fond memories from the day. I remember walking around outside, learning about the canal locks and about how mules helped to pull the boats. Going inside a one- room school house was fascinating, and made me curious about what it would have been like to be a student there. My mother volunteered to help with the trip, too, and I loved that. She let me buy a toy train whistle from the gift shop and I just thought it was the coolest thing. That wooden whistle ended up in a drawer of old things. Years later I would find it now and then accidentally, blow a couple toots, and remember how excited I was when I first got it. My favorite part though, had to be the Erie Canal song. I don’t recall if we learned it before, during, or after the trip, but that song has always stuck with me. I just looked up the website for the Erie Canal Village and was glad to see that they have the lyrics prominently posted on the site. Even today the song will pop into my head. A year or two ago I bought my father a Bruce Springsteen DVD, and would you believe it, it had a performance of him singing the Erie Canal song. One doesn’t always realize the historic importance of the places you live, but if Springsteen is singing about it, then it’s got to be important. I only visited the Erie Canal Museum that one time, but what I experienced there is still a part of my life today.

X-Men Succeed in Making First Space Elevator Using Nanotechnology

Cyclops tells the press about the importance of
the pace elevator in Marvel's X-Club #1

Imagine the possibilities of an elevator that could bring people and supplies all the way up to an orbiting space station. A space elevator has long since been a dream of science fiction, and more recently with the discovery of carbon nanotubes, is making its way into real science. As scientists use nanotechnology to create stronger and thinner materials, we become closer to achieving this dream. This week, in the pages of Marvel Comics, the X-Men's science team figured it out.

NASA depiction of a space elevator.
Artist: Pat Rawling

The science geek in me loves all the science talk in comic books. It doesn't always make a lot of sense, but it often lines up with some of the big science ideas that make their way into pop culture. For example, the Fantastic Four got their super powers in 1961 from cosmic radiation while traveling into outer space. This was the same year that Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.  Throughout the 1960's the word "atomic" was associated with just about everything in comics, and now in the new millennium its "nano" that keeps popping up.

I'm a member of the NISE Network, a community of scientists and educators that teach about nano-technology.  Nanotechnology is already changing our lives, and may end up having a bigger impact than the invention of personal computers or the internet.  Nano refers to a nanometer, which is one billion times smaller than a meter.  It is the same ratio as the size of the Earth compared to the size of a marble.  By studying and working with materials at the nano scale scientists can make things we never could before.  They are producing better sports equipment, clear sunblock, anti-stick substances, medicine, artificial flavors for our food, and spray-on coatings for our produce.  Nano-technology may even hold the key to fighting cancer, defeating AIDS, and to creating better photo-voltaic cells in solar panels.  If you've never hear of nanotechnology, check out the site and prepare to be amazed.

The cover of Marvel's X-Club #1
shows the four members of the
X-Men's Science team.

Okay, so back to that space elevator in the comic book. For those who keep up with the fictional world of Marvel comic books, you may know that the super-hero group, the X-Men, have founded a sanctuary and sovereign nation for mutants off the cost of San Francisco.   Utopia houses around 200 mutants.  On the island, the X-Men have a group of scientists called the "X-Club," which consists of two male mutant scientists, a female human scientist (Go Dr. Kavita Rao!), and a self-aware female robot (don't ask). The X-Club characters are normally supporting roles, but their new mini-series puts them in the spotlight.  And since the mutant nation is trying to convince the world not to fear and hate them, building a space elevator for humankind seemed like a good idea for public relations.

In the comic book, the leader of the X-Men tells the press that this project is part of a new era of privatized space exploration, and that it may benefit humankind by helping to monitor the ecological health of the earth, and harvest electricity for those communities that need it.  Is Cyclops just trying to gain credibility for his nation, or would a space elevator really do all of that?  I mean, in real life.

X-Club's Dr. Nemesis explains his process.

Of course we won't know until it finally happens, but a space elevator would be a big deal.  NASA and the US Military think so, and are researching the details.  Google thinks so, too.  They are trying to learn to build one in their secret research lab.

A space elevator would cut down dramatically on the costs of sending people and supplies into space.  Using rockets is very expensive, and a space elevator or elevators would cut down the need for them.  The space station on the other end of the elevator could conduct all kinds of science experiments.  A big part of what NASA does now is monitor the Earth.  I think we can assume that a space elevator would do some of this as well.  The station could also possibly be used to assemble and launch other space vehicles or satellites.  In this way the station could help launch, assemble, and repair solar energy-collecting satellites.  These could harness solar energy in space and beam it back down for us to use as electricity.  We are really just at the beginning of privatized space exploration.  With advances in nanotechnology it is a real possibility that space elevators may become a part of our lives in the coming decades.

I could keep writing about the comic book and about space elevators, but I think this post is just long enough.  Please, send me your comments, and if you're interested in this topic I've posted some links and a video below.

NASA's space elevator article: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast07sep_1/

NOVA's space elevator site: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/space-elevator.html

The International Space Elevator Consortium: http://isec.org/

Performing for Adolescent Psychiatric Patients: Part 1

Working with new groups of people is one of my favorite experiences as an informal science educator.  I find it a great challenge and opportunity to teach science to groups of people I haven't worked with before, especially if I think my interaction with them can have a positive impact.  You may be surprised to learn I've performed science shows for immigrant and refugee children, grieving children, hospitalized children, the elderly, and religiously conservative groups who may distrust science.  In each one of these cases I felt their was something special I could offer, and I did my best to tailor my shows to accomplish this.

Whenever someone calls to request a traveling show, I never know where it might lead. Recently a phone call led to my first performance at a psychiatric hospital for children and adolescent patients.  Huchings Psychiatric Center helps children with a variety of mental health problems.  Their website provides informational material on Depression, Eating Disorders, Schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses.  Before going to the Center I read through all of these materials and asked the women who booked the show a number of questions about what I should expect from the young people and how my shows fit in with their schedule.  The Center wanted to celebrate the Thankgiving school break with the patients, and thought it would be fun for the students to have me visit and provide some educational entertainment.

I ended up performing a show for the younger patients and another for the adolescent patients (ages 13-18), but it is the show for the adolescents I want to write about.  I knew I would have no problem with the younger audience, but I did a lot of thinking about how I would connect to the older kids and deliver a show that would entertain, teach, and possibly help with the healing that the audience needed.  I don't perform traveling shows often for teenagers, and it always makes me nervous.  An 18 year old can ask questions that are a lot harder than a 10 year old usually can, and many times teenagers can adopt an "I'm too cool for this" attitude.  Whenever I do a show for this age group I prepare with some extra reading on the science topics and commit myself to giving an A+ performance.   Having an audience full of teenagers who were potentially cutting, attempting suicide, and starving themselves before entering the Center seemed like it could add more difficulties I couldn't plan for.  Would the patients have problems with me as an "authority figure?"   Would they be angry they were forced to live in a hospital and resent me for being a part of it?  I just couldn't know.

Thankfully, the show went great.  In fact, it was an experience I won't soon forget and I don't think the teenagers will either.  If you had observed, you would have seen an audience eagerly participating and enjoying themselves while learning about optical illusions, the science of sound and music, and meeting the museum's pet turtle, Patsie.  The experience wasn't magical and didn't resemble a Hollywood drama, but it was real.  I noticed only one of the patients seemed a bit withdrawn, but even he was interested when he saw the African hand drum I brought.  I couldn't have asked for a better audience.  I left this show feeling like I had made a positive impact on the patients' day, and maybe even on their recoveries.

If you are an educator and you get the opportunity to work with a group you've never worked with before, or whom you might be reluctant to work with, I say to just go for it.  Do what research you can beforehand, and go for it.

In this post I gave a description of the show and my thoughts leading up to it.  In Part 2 I will talk about why I think the presentation worked and what role science presentations might have in the recovery of adolescent psychiatric patients.

Free-Choice Science Learning: A Show for All Ages

Photo from www.lymefreelibrary.org

I don't get requests to travel outside my county very often to perform "Traveling Science Shows," but I am always excited at the chance.  I enjoy the roadside scenery of a longer drive and the time to think.  Yesterday's show came with a 1 1/2 hour drive which culminated with a beautiful sunset over Lake Ontario.

When someone calls to book a show I always ask the age and number of people attending.  Going to a kindergarten class or a middle school assembly requires different science content and styles.  Yesterday's show at the Lyme Free Library was challenging because I was told we would have a small group (10-30 people) with an age range that would be considerable.  Astronomy was the requested topic.  I prepared as best I could and hoped for the best.  When the show started we certainly did have a diverse mix of ages.  There were several elementary age children and one teenager, but about half the audience members were adults who had come without children.

The presentation really was a show for all ages.  Judging by the questions, comments, participation, and attentiveness, the performance was a success.

How do you present an astronomy show and make it interesting for all ages?  What was my strategy?  What I decided to do was write a show that would start in a basic more child friendly place and slowly move to content for a more mature audience.  I also made the show flexible, so that I had ideas on how I could adapt the show as I went, depending on the audience's responses.  For example, if I ended up with all families I would spend more time telling constellation stories.  I must say that this strategy would not have worked at every venue.  The children were well behaved and eager to learn.  They were patient and attentive during the more adult sections and the adults were patient during the more child friendly sections.  I am still grateful that I had such a nice audience.

Some parts of the show seemed to appeal equally to all ages.  As part of my discussion on asteroids I brought a good sized iron meteorite to pass around through the audience.  Everyone got to experience the excitement of holding what was once the core of an ancient world now long destroyed, and the unexpected joy of feeling how heavy the thing really is.  The adults were interested in questions about what minerals we might harvest from asteroids and how we know that meteorites actually come from space.  The other part of the show that was a hit across age boundaries was a video from NASA of our next Mars rover.  One the boys even found a section in a book with a picture of Pathfinder, the first Mars rover, and showed it to me as we were ending.

I am glad I had this opportunity yesterday.  It was the first of its kind for me, and I am definitely interested in trying something like this again.  If you are an educator in a similar situation, or have done this kind of thing before, I would love to read about your experience.  Hopefully, reading about mine was helpful for you.

Here are some related links:
Asteroids as future resources: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/resource.html
Curiosity, next Mars rover: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

Don't forget the dry ice, but if you do... it's probably okay

Part of a "thank you" letter from one of the 4th graders today.

This morning I had driven halfway to a school to give science presentations to the students when suddenly I realized I forgot the dry ice for the show.  Just before starting out I had checked the contents of the cooler to make sure the dry ice hadn't all sublimated overnight, and yet somehow I managed to leave it behind.  After pulling over I tried calling the teacher who booked the shows to see if she wanted to push them back a half hour, but I couldn't get ahold of her.  My only choice was to continue on.  Fortunately I was bringing four other demonstrations with me, so putting on a good show wasn't the problem.  What made me feel bad was that the teacher had specifically requested I do the demonstration featuring dry ice as part of the show.  Every once in a while some minor slip-up like this will happen, and I always feel awful.


So what happened when I got there?  Did the teacher and the principal run me out of the school?  Did the students boo and decide they would live a life without science education?  No.  Instead, the teacher and the principal were welcoming, excited to have me, and quickly put my fears at ease when I apologized.  The shows ended up going great.  Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun learning about air pressure, chemistry, and Newton's 1st law of motion.  The teachers even had their cameras out, taking photos of some of the best parts.

An illustration of me doing the Power of Air demo.

You might be wondering why I would want to write about how I made a mistake, even if it did work out in the end.  The point is that most of the time things do work out.  I little mistake like that doesn't mean the program is finished or that you've ruined your reputation.  I think it is best to apologize and then give 100% in your performance.  The teachers want you to succeed.  The students want you to succeed.  The principal wants you to succeed.  The odds are still in your favor. 

I look forward to performing at this school again next year, and even though I know they wouldn’t be upset, next time I won’t forget the dry ice.

Some of the students wrote “thank you letters.”  I’ve scanned some of them to share with you.

I love that this student included all threee layers of cups and saucers, and drew me with such an exciting pose.

If this doesn't warm your heart, what will?

A Normal Week: Harry Potter Day, TV Morning Show Appearance, and an Inner City Afterschool Program

Thank you for checking out my new blog.  This is the first post and I'm excited to think about what the future might hold.  The general idea is to share my thoughts on science and education with everyone in the blogosphere, and to write about what it is like (at least for me) to work at a science museum.  If you work at a similar institution of free-choice learning, hopefully you can find some ideas here that will be helpful to you. Or if you are still in school wondering about what kind of career might be the right fit, maybe reading these posts will help you decide.  Or perhaps you are visiting this blog for some other reason all together.  No matter why you came, I hope you found something useful.  If you have, I would love to hear about it.


So what is a normal work week like for someone like me?  It is hard to say what is normal, but I can share some of the more interesting parts of the past few days.


Saturday: Harry Potter Day at the Museum!  This was a lot of fun.  The museum is currently showing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Prt. 2 in our IMAX Omni-theater so we decided to invite our guests to dress like wizards and witches and attend special Harry Potter planetarium shows, potions demonstrations, and a Herbology lesson.  Setting the date for the two days before Halloween was pretty smart, too, as lots of kids had their costumes on.  I wrote and performed the planetarium shows and the potions demonstrations.  As a big fan or Harry Potter and of astronomy and the history of science, this is exactly the kind of thing I love to do.  I spent the day in my wizard costume, calling myself Professor Merlon and talking about how science is used in the world of Harry Potter and pretending to make magical potions.  One of our volunteers grows mandrake, monk's hood, and belladonna plants.  He brought those in for the Herbology lesson, helping to flesh out the day with a station that parents could really get into.  July 31st is Harry Potter's birthday, and I am thinking I might suggest we celebrate it each year with a Harry Potter Day at the museum.


Monday: TV Appearance:  One of the coolest and scariest things about my job is making TV appearances.  Every month or so I'm usually a guest on Channel 9's Bridge Street morning show for a 4 minute science segment.  A couple times I've also been interviewed by other channels asking about things like "blue moons" or the "new zodiac."  Bridge Street is broadcast live, which means that any mistake I make is seen by a whole lot of viewers as well as my colleagues and boss.  This was probably my fifth time on, and like always it was a lot of fun.  The staff there is friendly and likes to joke around, making a confortable atmosphere.  Since it was Halloween I dressed up as Merlon again and did some science/magic demonstrations with pumpkins.


Tuesday Morning:  Planetarium Shows for Syracuse City 6th Graders:  This is the second year in a row we have brought all the 6th graders on special field trips to the museum.  Within the course of a few months we end up bringing about 1,600 students to the museum and running them through a number of science activities.  For my part I give a custom planetarium show related to their curriculum.  Today's three shows went well, and in fact I was surprised by how well behaved the students were.  I really like doing these shows, because it gives me a chance to talk about subjects we don't usually cover in our general audience weekend planetarium shows.  This year I'm focusing a big portion of the presentation on human and robotic space exploration of asteroids and the planet Mars.  If you've never heard of NASA's NEEMO or Desert RATS programs, check them out.  They are so cool.




Tuesday Afternoon:  Afterschool Program @ Local City School:  This year our Education Department has started working with the federally funded Say Yes program in our school district.  Every Tuesday and Thursday three of us go to one of the city schools and work for two hours with elementary students.  This is only our second week, but we are starting to develop trust with the students and are figuring out what kinds of activities work best for them.  This afterschool program is probably the hardest thing I have had to do so far with this job.  My experience lies in performing science shows for students, not managing a classroom.  Being in a city school adds a number of challenges too.  I am working hard to try to understand the culture and needs of the students.  Each day when they arrive at the classroom, even after a full day of school, almost every one of them is excited to learn about science and is curious about the day’s lessons.  Whenever I'm feeling like I'm in over my head, I remind myself of the amazing opportunity I have to help these students explore that curiosity and love of science.