Winter Session

December 4, 2013

9:00 - 10:00 -- Middle Students (age 7-12)
10:15- 11:15 -- Teens (age 11-16)
The classes for Younger (age 5-8) and Mixed Ages (age 5-16) will cover the same general topics as the Middle Class, but the presentations and experiments will be adapted as needed for the students’ ages and skill levels.
MIDDLE, YOUNGER, AND MIXED CLASS:
1. Laser Sound Waves: You get a chance to turn your screams into vibrations and then into a laser-light show.
2. Hovering Helium Balloons: Helium balloons usually go up so we’re going to try to make them hover and follow us wherever we go without any connections.
3. Simple Machines – Tug-of-War: If you were allowed to use human-powered machines in a tug-of-war, could you beat superman?
4. Trap a Minion: Minions can be sneaky if M&M’s are involved… could you create a trap that would capture a minion?
5. Crazy Inventions: You’ll try to crush a grape with a falling nickel… sounds impossible? I bet you will be able to do it!
6. Tower of Zoobs: These weird plastic Zoobs look kind of like peanuts but they fit together. Your job is to try to build a tower as tall as yourself with them.
7. Yeastie Beasties: If you feed your pet yeasties and keep them warm, they will inflate a balloon for you!
8. Frost: You’ll try to make water crystals that look like snowflakes with dry ice, alcohol, and your own breath.
9. Pop Guns: You’ll experiment with ways to launch a cork using air pressure and your own human power.
10. Woodwinds: There are lots of ways to make noise with hollow tubes, but there is a special type of tube that can make really loud, horrible, terrible, and rotten noises!
TEEN CLASS
1. Motorized Sumo Wrestling: Build a motorized robot platform, place it inside a circle with an opponent, and let the carnage begin!
2. Sumo Contest: It takes two lessons to build and then test the machines.
3. Voltage Transformers: Ordinary-looking coils of wire can convert wimpy voltages into deadly, writhing, snakes of purple lightning.
4. Resonant Steam Boat: Sometimes the simplest-looking toys end up being the hardest things to duplicate… but you’ll get a chance to try!
5. Test Steam Boats
6. Plating Metals: You get to dissolve some precious metal in a powerful acid and then try to get it to un-dissolve by using electricity.
7. Propeller Cars: Here’s your chance to create an airplane on wheels and smash it into a steel wall!
8. Propeller Car Test
9. Sparks from Rocks and Steel: Grinding, smashing, and scraping various materials together can end up producing some serious fireworks.
10. Sodium and Magnesium: These metals can be extremely dangerous if you don’t know how to handle them. As usual, you’ll get a chance to try your hand at creating a small fire and then extinguish it.