MakePhilly / Wondergy BBQ

Solar Smores and water bottle rockets?  This is not your ordinary BBQ.  Make:Philly and Wondergy are joining forces for a novel and explosive public BBQ in Fairmount Park on Sunday, August 8th,  2010.  All are welcome.

For MakePhilly, a group of Philadelphia area artists and engineers, this will be its 4^th Annual  BBQ.   MakePhilly’s goal is to promote creative collaboration in the do-it-yourself (DIY) community by encouraging its members to learn through making things.  Each year attendees of all ages make their own water rockets and then bring them to the BBQ to launch among a community of fellow “makers.”

For this year’s BBQ, MakePhilly has teamed up with Wondergy, a Philadelphia-based science educational entertainment company.  Wondergy is a team of scientists who love to play with the world around them.  They put interactive science education in unexpected places like Phillies games, Skatebaording competitions, concerts, corporate meetings, birthday parties, and of course, BBQs.

Wondergy is infusing science-based fun into this year’s BBQ with several exciting new additions including “Solar Smores”, in which attendees will use the power of sunlight to set marshmallows ablaze under giant parabolic mirrors.  The heat from the sun (and some liquid nitrogen) will also create an explosion which will launch a trash can 20-50 ft in the air, as Wondergy recently presented live on NBC TV and has now become a favorite addition to outdoor Wondergy events.

All are welcome to attend.  Bring a picnic lunch and if you have a small grill, feel free to bring it too.

Be sure to also make and bring your own water rocket! Never made one? No worries, water rockets are easy to make!  They are just water or soda bottles which are filled half way with water, pressurized with a bicycle pump and then launched.  For visual instructions on how to make one, check out this instructable:  http://www.instructables.com/id/Water_Rocket/ .  Be sure to pimp your water rocket with some stylin’ colors!  We’ll bring the launcher.

Event Details
Date: Sunday, August 8th
Time:  1-3PM
Place: Lemon Hill, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia
Map: Download from here
Food: Potluck – please bring something to share with 3-4 other people.
Cost: Potluck or $5-10 donation
Parking: Free
Kid Friendly: Yes
Adult Friendly: Yes
Water Rocket: Build yours at home and bring with you, along with a bottle of water

Here is a map to find the event.
If you call the Wondergy line at 86-MOLECULE (or 215-382-4280) we will be answering it remotely, so feel free to call if you have questions.

In case you haven’t seen the videos popping up around the internet, or you haven’t seen a Wondergy CoolScience show recently, this is our newest hit demo.  Space permitting, we launch a 30-50 gallon trashcan 30-50 ft in the air, without any chemical reactions at all!

Here is what it looks like.

Peter and the Oscilloscope

Wondergy added a bit of science to Berg-O-Pallooza at The Note in West Chester, PA May 29, 2010. Awesome crowd!

We projected our Laser Oscilloscope over the bands, and offered up some fire-ey science between the bands. Click on the photo for more!

Video coming soon.

Wondergy Scientists Ken Fink and Charles Bowman appeared on the NBC 10! Show on Memorial Day to celebrate the Fliers and the heat, and to launch a 44 Gallon trash can into the air. It was so successful that our video was the featured video on the “10! Show” home page (for that day’s show)! Check it out!

AAAS blogged about our appearance, too. Read about it here.

Thanks go to Discover Magazine for pointing out this wonderful breakthrough!
Click here to find out more…

(Btw – Happy Belated April Fools…)

Canada is using Science to get ahead in the Olympic medal count – and who could blame them? Funded by the Own the Podium project, Canada has invested millions of dollars into advancing the science of the Winter Games. Of course, their findings won’t be made public until June 2010 at the earliest, but their results will be on display in the form of every Canadian Olympian’s performance.

And what about Curling? Well, it turns out that the sweeping motion of the brooms on the ice never actually melts the ice – it just changes the ice’s phase a bit, and thus the ice’s friction. I suspect it may be something like this: Ice Phases. Again, we won’t know the science until after June 2010. Stay tuned for more!

For the initiated, curling is the the on-ice equivalent of chess… and a wonderful game! Find out more about it here: Curling

This link originally came from here (Wondergy does not endorse the views of external blogs).

Can’t get enough of Wondergy? Neither can we! And neither can the press!

Take a look at the most recent articles by or about Wondergy:

The Philly Inquirer

The Jewish Exponent

Curious Parents

Curious Parents (again – guess they are curious)

We are happy to announce that the Potato Chip Challenge website is up and running! If you or a teacher you know was waiting around for the right moment to sign up, now is the time! Sign-ups have already begun to flood in so join in the engineering challenge. A lesson plan for teachers to use will be posted soon.

To sign up, create a login for yourself (or tell your favorite teacher to do so) and fill out the required information (for yourself and your school). If you are doing this independently of a school, enter in wherever the chips will be received. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll see a link to “manage your challenge” (login required) – from there you can update your registration information and create one (or more) classes. More details can be found here: Site FAQ

Leonid Meteor Shower - Photo Courtesy of NASA

The end of the year this year looks to be a great time for sky watching. There are two meteor showers coming up and they both look to be rather large. Better yet, the moon will be new for both of these showers’ peaks, meaning there will be the lowest possible light interference for watching the meteor shower (well, interference that you can’t control by leaving the city). You can see more details here: http://skytour.homestead.com/met2009.html#anchor_12

From November 14 – 21, the Leonid meteor shower will be occurring. Its peak is on Nov 17th at 4 PM (so watch it that night).

December 13 & 14 will feature the Geminid meteor shower, with its peak on Dec. 14, 12 AM.

Curious about the names for these meteor showers? Well, even though meteors can appear in any part of the sky, they all seem to originate from one point in the sky (called the radiant point). The shower is named for the star closest to that radiant point. For a decent visual about the radiant point, look here: http://www.theurbansky.com/2009%20Meteor%20Shower.html

Ever wonder what color the Universe is? Well, wonder no more. Credit goes to Karl Glazebrook & Ivan Baldry for measuring the Average Color of the Universe in 2002. Its hexidecimal RGB code is #FFF8E7 and its name is “Cosmic Latte.”

So why, if the Universe is really that color, do we see a mostly black sky at night? This is something known as Olbers’ Paradox. One solution to the paradox says that not all of the light in the Universe has reached us yet. Another says that because the Universe is expanding, the Doppler effect (as it applies to light/relativity) shifts most of that Universal Light out of our visual spectrum. Look here for a full explanation: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/scienceques2002/20030328.htm

We have gathered many tips from experience which are meant to make your event run as smoothly as possible and give everyone the best experience they can get from our show. To see the list, go here: http://www.wondergy.com/tips.php

As previously mentioned, Wondergy is launching the Potato Chip Challenge, a national engineering competition for students in grades K-12. There is now an official press release that can be found here: http://www.wondergy.com/about/pcc.php

Feel free to spread the word around!

Wondergy is proud to announce that we will be running a nationwide engineering challenge this school year! We’ve taken over the Potato Chip Challenge, a project in which students design packages to successfully get a potato chip through the mail to another student across the country, without breaking the chip. This real-world engineering problem is aligned with the National Science Standards, in which students identify, design, implement, evaluate, and communicate a science or engineering problem. To further help, Wondergy will be publishing lesson plans to support teachers who choose to participate.

While the website is being completed, we’re looking for more interested schools. Last time this was run, there was a network of over 120 schools; we would like to invite our friends and colleagues into this wonderful network, too. To further develop the network, Wondergy is also seeking a financial sponsor. If you think that the Potato Chip Challenge sounds interesting, please tell your child’s teacher or principal. If you are a teacher and would like to sign your class up for the challenge, by all means do so! To sign up for the challenge’s mailing list, please visit: www.potatochipchallenge.com/signup.html

For more information and rules of the challenge, see www.potatochipchallenge.com

Check out Wondergy’s new article in Curious Parents. Learn all about how printers and computer screens fool your eye. Grab a magnifying glass and have a blast!

Wondergy is certified to be a government contractor, thanks in part to Assembly Lime. To find out more about Wondergy’s contracting services, click here.

Here’s a preview of our services:

Wondergy develops and delivers interactive science educational programs for professional training, schools, and public outreach, and has done so for over 7 years with a strong track record of customer and participant satisfaction. In addition to schools, conference rooms, and offices, we strive to put education in unexpected places, including Major League Baseball games, skateboarding demonstrations, community festivals, and more. Our clients have included Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Phi Theta Kappa, America’s Video Game Expo, Curtis Analytic Partners, and the Philadelphia Phillies.

When you select Wondergy for your professional training and outreach services, you get the most effective, customized product that makes learning meaningful, experiential, multi-sensory, hands-on, and fun. We start by learning about our clients’ needs, then draw on our past experience and diverse technical knowledge, and assemble a customized product that truly gets the message across.

More pictures of recent Wondergy programs have been posted. We also have up a pair of new videos from our latest offering, SkateScience! Check them out here: http://www.wondergy.com/about/photos.html

We also have a new page up to help all of you get the most out of your Wondergy programs. Check it out: http://www.wondergy.com/tips.php

As anyone who has had to take a statistics course can attest, graphs (and by extension Excel) can be used to justify just about anything. Statistics can be twisted and skewed to show just about any desired result. Of course, if you want to give honest statistics, there are measurements that can be used to show how significant any given result really is. Those trying to lie through statistics, of course, don’t want you to know the “result” is insignificant and not real. Those skilled at misleading statistics can get pretty good about making their statistics look “real.” Some, it seems, lack any sort of finesse and just hope you’ll be too in awe of their graph to ask any questions: Thank you FoxNews.com.

*I know the word “bad” isn’t usually used here. Children could be looking so… give me a break.

Forty years ago today, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the moon (and then went for a bit of a walk). Thanks to a “live” feed from NASA and the JFK memorial library, you can listen to the audio between Apollo 11 and mission control here: http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/

Other random tid-bits about the moon landing can be found here.

Subscribe to our email list

Our mailing list is now ready…

Sign up now at http://www.wondergy.com/email.php

Enjoy the scientific ruminations!

Have you ever wondered how is it that Cole Hamels can throw a curveball and fake out the batters? As we so often find out in science, things may not be as simple as we first thought:

Initially, there was a debate over if a curveball actually curved in the air. Some people thought it might only be an optical illusion, while others argued that it really curved. Eventually, it was shown that curveballs really do curve (Check out this page). How? It all depends on how the baseball is spinning when it leaves the pitcher’s hand. Proper curveballs spin in such a way to create an area of high-pressure on the top of the ball (or slightly off to the side) to force the ball downwards faster than it would fall with gravity alone (Thank you Wikipedia).

But wait! It turns out that those who thought curveballs were merely illusion were not totally wrong! While a curveball does actually curve, its movement is exaggerated by an optical illusion. The illusion was recently shown by Arthur Shapiro of Bucknell University in Pennsylvania (and can be seen here), whose illusion was voted the best visual illusion in the world. So what is Cole Hamels really throwing at the plate? Looks like part curving ball, part optical illusion.

By now you’re probably wondering why there is a cute picture of a group of kids wearing Phillies gear gathering around a large metal bowl and not a picture of someone throwing a baseball. Good eye! This is a picture from when Wondergy was at the Phillies to make ice cream and explore the science of states of matter (our CoolScience program). This year is our third season with the Phillies!