The other side of Science = Art

I came across this contest this morning and thought how artistic it is and how a little science helps in coming up with such creativity....The contest is to make a sculpture using just ... Scotch tape...yep, the clear and versatile tape that we use almost everyday!!  And you know my mantra ... Find science and art all around us....and use every day materials to do it:)

here is an example of some of the coolest sculptures people created just using Scotch Tape..



Look at different examples on the site - http://www.offtherollcontest.com/ViewEntries.aspx

and while looking, think about what tools/methods they used to make these sculptures....and isn't that the science behind the creations? 

Smallest computer is a raspberrypi

I was just reading up on the world's smallest and most defintiely the cheapest computer...and its name is Rasberry Pi.  Its a single board computer aimed mainly at children to teach/learn basic computer skills and if I am not mistaken, can learn BASIC programming as well:)

And the best part is - it costs $25 - $35 and a few more dollars for power source etc etc etc.  I already went and checked to see if I can get one but not quite yet.  Apparantly the first wave is intended towards developers who can come up with fun programs...

The computer is created by Raspberry foundation and aiming and shipping this product soon all over the world....and another cool thing is, the chip is developed by one of our Silicon Valley companies - Broadcom.

The computer itself is stateless so even if the kids (or adults) mess it up, all you have to do is reset and the computer goes back to its original states .. Yes, its not for typing Microsoft Word documents or power point presentations but I think its the coolest gadget of today:)  Cant wait to get my hands on it..

Will update when I do get my hands on it...

if you are interested in buying and meddling with one,

check out www.raspberrypi.org

First Science Fair in town...

Last thursday, we had a small but awesome science fair in a preschool, Childrens House of Los Altos.  We took our
(a) bubble exhibit to make bubbles around the kids,
(b) big mirage,
(c) the Who-is-who exhibit to see part of your face combined with part of the face who sits opposite to you,
(d) Chinese spouting bowl,
(e) Earthquake simulator,
(f) Fun Flystick,
(g) UFO ball to teach about how breaking a circuit breaks the electricity flow
(h) butterfly exhibit which for some reason stopped working half hour into the fair...

Kids had a blast and it was wonderful seeing all the parents enjoying with the kids and asking questions....A big Thanks to Ella Mayon, principal of the school for giving us the opportunity to do our first Science Fair....

We are hoping to do a lot more of these in the furture....

The email we received after the fair:

 

" Thank you so much for the nice science fair last night....it was so well received by the children and parents and was very special!  I look forward to you keeping in touch with me so we can have teacher workshops as well as have another fair next year!

 

Good luck with your venture, we really need this wonderful experience for all families and children!"

 

Here are a couple of pictures from the science fair

After restarting the blog last time, lot of changes happened including us moving back to bayarea, CA.  We moved back summer of last year and then took time to figure out things.  After a settling down, started ground work to start a new enterprise with the intention of providing ways to bring more hands-on science and enquiry based science activities to children.  I did a few "Science shows" in our son's Kindergarten class and have been very well recieved by teachers and children.  We did a hands-on science activity (phosphorescent slime) in 3rd grade class in local elementary school and became a big hit.  So, the new venture ScienceIsFun is well on the way with meetings set up with SCORE to figure out the nitty gritty details of starting the business.

Had to start a new blog as the old blog site was giving too many problems just getting into it.  And turned out, there is no easy way to import the old blog posts into the new one...After a couple of hours of researching, gave up and manually did each post with the correct date (good old cut and paste).  Only problem is we lost the comments as i cannot get them here.

I will update and post pictures of the science fair we had last week in the next post.....

Testing out the new blog...next step is to see if i can import all the old blog posts from the old blog to here....

We are back with an awesome Solar Cooker project update

Sorry about missing in action for a few weeks.  We moved to Espoo recently and have been travelling a bit but I am back full time to SciFun:)  Yesterday we had a great day with two solar cooker projects with Tampere IB high school students as well as IEEC (formerly known as English Playschool) preschool kids.
I had 5 different solar cookers done of different complexity levels with my family's help (including my 5 yr old applying glue)... A panel solar cooker, a parabolic solar cooker, a box cooker from a old box that I left to throw out, a hot dog cooker out of shoebox and a pizza cooker out of....yes, a pizza box.  It was lot of fun making them and I tried most of them (The Sun is still not that regular and hot in Finland yet).  I took all 5 of them for display to the schools.
After a 10 minute presentation basically giving them intro about Solar cookers and where they are used most widely today and the three main principles involved in it, I showed them the designs and encouraged them to create their own designs using the three principles.  Since I gave the material list needed beforehand, the student groups came prepared.  There were 30+ students from France visiting the Tampere IB school and ofcourse they were also invited to participate.  The student groups started designing rightaway and it was awesome to see each group working on a different design just glancing at the traditional designs once in a while.  I didn't get a chance to see the final designs but they do have time till next friday (April29) to finish and test their designs.  We did make this into a friendly competition and pick the most creative solar cooker that works efficiently.  I will try to post some pictures from yesterday and the final designs soon.  I caught one group calculating the focal point for their solar cooker while another group were using industrial strength stapler on their cooker:)  I saw some art work going into one of the solar cookers and definitely saw lot of discussions all through the project.  It was truly a great example for team work in that room yesterday.  They genuinely seemed to be enjoying the project and most definitely were thinking out of the box..
In the afternoon, I went and talked to the 6-7yr old children at the level they would understand.  It was fun hearing their explanations about why black pot would be better to use than others, what does Sun give us etc.  They all listened attentively when I told them they could build a hot dog cooker with just a little help from their teachers and then cook hotdogs when we have more Sun.  One of the kids wanted to surprise the parents by building one and cook a hot dog for them:)  There wasn't enough time for them to build them yesterday and I returned back home to Espoo.
Today I got the following note from the preschool teacher Liliana:
"So we made the solar cookers today. We made 3 normal box ones, one pizza one, one hot dog one... and then we got creative and we made a FRENCH FRIES one, with a plastic container plus opening on the top to add salt and oil... designed by the kids... and then we have an egg cooker as well. I hope you don't mind that we broke away from the norm... they understood the concept behind the solar cooker so they asked if they could create their own... I said why not?"
My response to her - Mission accomplished:)  They had fun and learnt about Solar cooking and probably even more about energy and heat and the best part is, they now think Science if Fun not just theory and hardwork:)
The picture below shows the Tampere IB high school teacher Kaarina who is the main person behind the project.  Their Chemistry teacher Johanna was also involved with the project from the beginning.