At the beginning and end of each day
campers gather in the auditorium to hear about upcoming activities and
rules for the contests.
Computers
On Monday the campers were introduced to the programming language Alice.
They refined their skills on Tuesday and produced some interesting results.
On Wednesday campers finished their projects.
If you want to learn more about the programming language they were using go to:
Alice
Chemistry
Here on Monday campers learned the safety rules for laboratory
activities and dyed their safety goggles to make them unique and easy
to recognize.
They will need them for experiments later in the week.
They also discovered the effect that acetone has on Styrofoam cups.
In chemistry campers started growing borax crystals on Tuesday.
Campers got to see their crystals and built conductivity testers on Wednesday.
Astronomy
They began making a book of the phases of the moon on Monday.
Astronomy class on Tuesday they finished their moon phase calendars made and tested spectroscopes.
Wednesday they built bottle powered rockets and tested the accuracy of their design.
Biology
Investigating the senses of taste, smell, touch, and sight was on tap on Monday.
Games demonstrated results of predators their prey and resources and consumers.
Campers collected data and plotted it and had a lot of fun.
Wednesday in biology they dissected owl
pellets and tried to identify
what animal the owl had eaten by examining the bones the pellets
contained.
Physics
We began the week studying bubbeology.
We put people in bubbles, made round bubbles, long ones, big ones,
square ones, and made flat ones that had windows that you could put
your head
through.
We talked about some of the ways bubbles ares used in science and how
to tell the thickness by the color of the bubble.
The bubble in the bottle lasted more than 54 hours. It broke overnight so it lasted less than 72 hours.
In physics we began to make hot air balloons.
Campers traced the outline of the balloon gores on tissue paper, cut them out and started to assemble them.
If you want to try it yourself go
here.
Wednesday we finished the balloons and
tried to solve some matchstick, tangram and penny puzzles.
Our volunteers are older students who
help in the classrooms, prepare materials for the classes and contests,
and run many of the Olympics events.