Science Camp
Pikeville College
July 24-28, 2000
Each year the college sponsors a camp for 125 fifth through eighth graders.  When we heard that they needed someone to manage the physics portion Alan applied and was accepted.  It has been great fun for both of us.  The kids have 3 days of experiments and classes.  Topics include: astronomy, biology, computers, chemistry, and physics.  They build and launch hot air balloons and rockets; dissect a shark and a computer;  go on an internet scavenger hunt; take part in a math/science olympics; and visit a science museum (COSI) in Columbus, Ohio.

The pictures below show some of the amazing bubbles that we generated.

              

Robert Arts runs the program.

Building the hot air balloons takes 2 hours, 8 sheets of tissue paper, a glue stick, wire and care.

              

Launching the balloons
Most of the balloons flew a couple of hundred feet.  Some made it across the ball field and over the fence that you can see in the background.

        

One of the balloons went across the highway and nearly made it to the other side of the mountain.  We estimate it got to an altitude of 350 to 400 feet and landed about .8 of a mile from the launch site.  The cross hairs indicate the position of the balloon in this picture.  In the full resolution picture it occupies about 8 pixels.

Water rocket launches
The kids made rockets out of pop bottles and launchers out of CPVC pipe. When they partially filled the bottle with water and pressurized it with air from a compressor or tire pump it would fly several stories up.  Note the spray in the third picture.

    

The classes

        

Physics olympics
In addition to the water balloon slingshot, marshmallow tower, and paper airplane events there were also an egg drop, foil boat, straw strong-arm, paper skyscraper, and toothpick bridge competitions.
    

COSI

The museum was a great end to the week.  There were lots of hands on science demonstrations.  The kids liked lifting a car using a long lever, exploring an archeological dig, being rock stars (the instruments had lots of audio effects) and riding the unicycle 20 feet above the crowd.

      


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