Science Night!

What a fun night it turned out to be. I was pretty stressed out the day before, because it looked like we might not get nearly enough volunteers. But happily we did end up having lots of wonderful people willing to help. We had the star lab, telescopes, all the students' projects, and my husband and I put a bunch of experiments together. I was super-busy all night - I took "Junior Scientist" portraits, and did some other things too. So I didn't get a lot of pictures, and I never saw the star lab, or even many of the projects, but I think a friend took pictures of those for me.

This one is one of my favorite experiments. (You might need some background on me - I have a degree in chemical engineering, that's why I feel strongly enough about science night to be the chairperson.) This is cabbage water indicator. When you add an acid to it, the purple turns pink. When you add a base, it turns blue or green. Fun! (The concept of acids and bases is a little tricky to simplify down to the elementary school level...)



This is another great experiment - it's bubbles made using dry ice, so they are filled with fog. It seemed to work really well.


This was a new one to me this year - it's called "elephant's toothpaste" and is a rapid decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. At times they got it to shoot out of the bottle, fun! It looks kind of like the typical baking soda/vinegar volcano reaction, but lasts much longer.


The rest are student portraits I took - they love dressing up like a scientist. I give them the pictures later on. Last year they seemed to enjoy them - hopefully this year will be the same.




My husband donated the welding goggles this year - they were very popular.




When I was stressed out about volunteers I had told myself that I wouldn't do science night again next year. But it ended up being so fun, plus my husband gave me a nice pep talk about how important it is to make science fun for kids, so I'm guessing I'll do it again.

And now... I can go back to photography!