The Leonardo on Wheels

Our school took part in the Leonardo on Wheels Science www.theleonardo.org/onwheels exhibit last week. You know, the Leonardo, the place where you saw Body Worlds last year. Yeah. That's the one. The science museum. Well anyway they have this really cool out reach program which brings science to the schools. It was for our 7-9th graders, and I was a parent volunteer. (Doesn't hurt to squeeze those volunteer hours in early does, it?)

The first two days were "freeplay" days. The students could do all the exhibits.

Obviously the static electricity ball was one of the most popular exhibits.

Micro-worlds was really fun too. You could explore with the digital microscope. BTW digital microscopes are a LOT more fun to use than those old put- your -specimen- on- a- slide microscopes. Things sure have advanced since I was in school.

Checking hair was a popular feature.

So was checking skin. It was really funny to see how much dirt was really on the kids' hands. Kind of an eye-opener for them.

This display was on optical illusions and perspective.

These two photos show the whisper dishes. They were set up across the gym under the basketball hoops on opposite sides. One needed only to whisper and the listener could hear them all the way across the room regardless of the other noise in the room. Pretty cool.

This display was about energy output. Obviously it takes more energy to power the incandescent lights than it does the new CFL ones.

The video on the left depicts the air-flow and topography station. It really was a cool way to make your own tornados. On the right is the class demonstration of how electricity travels through a circuit. I saw this done about 6 or 7 times with different classes. It never got old :)

The last two days students worked in their notebooks at four of the stations. I was the guide for the exercise bike/energy output station, then I did the velocity tracks which took into account the length, slope and how dense a ball was to measure the speed of it on different tracks.