Pikeville
Science and
Math Camp 2008
Week Two
The
campers had a
lot of fun this year. Here are pictures of the five groups.
Chemistry
Campers got to
personalize their own
safety goggles.
They used them in
classes and took
them home at the end of the week.
Here they are building
conductivity
testers that they used to evaluate various liquid samples.
The kids used a solution
of alum
(hydrated aluminum potassium sulfate KAl(SO4)2.12H2O) to grow crystals.
Here are some of the
outstanding
results.
Biology
Test your
senses of smell,
touch, vision, and taste.
How does your sense
of color and
temperature depend on what you have just seen and felt.
A couple more tests
Getting ready for an eco
scavenger
hunt.
Dissecting a dogfish
shark.
Physics
Bubbleology
What can you learn from
the colors?
Why are they round
unless disturbed
by air currents or surfaces?
How big a bubble can you
make?
Do you have other
questions to be
investigated?
Bubbles can be
constrained on or
between surfaces to make them easier to study.
Have you ever made a
hole in a big
flat bubble and put your head through it?
Or been inside one?
The campers built hot
air balloons
out of tissue paper.
And tried to place
pennies on a
checkerboard so that no two were in the same row, column or diagonal.
This is commonly known
as the eight
queens problem.
They also learned the
game Nim and
worked on tangram puzzles.
Astronomy
The kids learned about the
phases of the
moon and made books that showed the changes through the month.
Computers
They learned a computer
language and
each made their own unique program.
Science
Olympics
A series of competitions
were held on
Thursday.
How many words can you make using the symbols on the periodic table.
Make a tower as tall as
you can with
a limited supply of paper and tape.
Try to figure out what
is in a box
without opening it.
Make a bridge using
toothpicks and
then test it to destruction.
Make a foil boat and
test what load
will sink it.
Play "Who Wants To Win a
Million
Dollars" with lots of different science questions.
Your team fires water
balloons at a
target.
The big contest was to
build a
platform to catch a steel ball dropped on it.
The ball must not punch
through or
bounce off of your catcher.
Points are awarded for
low weight and
height of the catcher as well as the greatest height successfully
tested.
One lunch time we
launched an
oversize balloon from the bridge.
It ended up decorating
the top of a
nearby tree.
Here are some pictures
of successful
launches of the balloons the kids made.
Some of them landed in
trees too.
But this one went for an
altitude and
distance record.
It is the barely visible
dot that you
may be able to see in the center of the circle.
The winners of the
various contests
They get some nice prizes and
the
admiration of their campmates.
Field
trip
This year we went to Bays
Mountain park
where we saw some wildlife close up.
E-mail Nancy
and
Alan