Motorola, Lockheed, and More
More Case Studies
Motorola
Making Waves Festival
Motorola had traditionally hosted a "Family Fun Day," which invited employees and local community to visit the Motorola Museum of Electronics in Schaumberg, IL. The problem was that the activities were generally unrelated to Motorola. Ken Fink was brought in to change this.
The Fun Day activities were revised around a central concept: Motorola is all about making and manipulating waves (sound waves, light waves, and radio waves). The Motorola Museum's semi-circular upper floor was turned into a giant cello, with piano wire and sounding boards and a giant laser oscilloscope projected on the ceiling. Extra restrooms were converted into temporary light and sound labs. Participants formed a human FRS-based fax machine and had an FRS based scavenger hunt. There were over a dozen activities, largely staffed by volunteers.
The re-vamped Fun Day was so well received that tales of its success went all the way up to the Chief Learning Officer, who asked for more. This is how Wondergy began.
Lockheed Martin CSS
Communicate! The science of satellite communication
Wondergy was asked to provide programming for Lockheed Martin's Young Minds at Work day. Following a similar process to Motorola's, we got to the core of LM's technologies: satellites help us "talk farther." The keynote began with a simple message and a challenge to deliver it farther and farther. The program progressed from hand-delivery to spinning magnets, which grew into radio and eventually our own indoor satellite to rebroadcast sound over light waves. Later activities included adaptations of Wondergy's existing offerings: Centrifugal Circus to explore how satellites stay in orbit and CoolScience as an extreme conditions room where we froze and boiled materials with liquid nitrogen.
The response to the program can be summed up by Joe, an electrical engineer for Lockheed Martin:
"My daughter and I saw two of your shows at the recent Young Minds At Work program at Lockheed Martin in Newtown. We both loved it. I'm an electrical engineer, and well versed in the subjects I saw you explaining, but I thoroughly enjoyed your demonstrations all the same. And, I can appreciate the difficulty of making these topics engaging and comprehensible for children without sacrificing accuracy, and you guys have done a great job of it. Einstein said 'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler,' and you were obviously listening. You have succeeded in taking complex concepts and bringing them down without dumbing them down, and that is an admirable achievement."
The Philadelphia Phillies
Phillies Extreme Ice Cream and The Science of the Rain Delay
Not all of Wondergy's programming is custom-developed. The Philadelphia Phillies regularly ask Wondergy to appear on the concourse and in the Hall of Fame Club of Citizens Bank Park, offering up-close experiments during Phillies games and special events. Most frequently we invite guests to make their own ice cream using liquid nitrogen but, when the weather turned wet, we were prepared to accommodate rain-delay crowds, both with ice cream and the science of the rain!
"As always, I cannot speak highly enough about you guys. Both from an entertainment standpoint, as well as your willingness to make our events a success. Case in point, your ability to stick out our rain delay past the scheduled time. We always receive rave reviews about your show!"
Jerry O'Connor, The Philadelphia Phillies
Heritage Builders Group
Safe Alchemy
A construction firm which specializes in building Banks asked Wondergy to help them attract retail bank representatives at the NJ Bankers' Association Convention. One catch: They had discovered Wondergy only one week before the conference! Could we help? Absolutely. We modified a previously developed chemistry demonstration and it fit the bill (or, in this case, penny).
We learned that their experience with vaults was one of their biggest differentiating factors, so we focused on what makes safes strong: alloys. We invited bankers to turn pennies into silver and gold – an attractive proposition. They were really making alloys and exploring how mixing metals can combine their properties to make them more resistant to heat, drilling, explosions, and more. We imprinted our client's name into every penny, punched it, and turned guests' experiments into key chains and bracelets. It drew quite an interested crowd, including nearby exhibitors, and generated substantial leads for our client.
Curtis Analytic Partners
Annual Retreat Keynote
Wondergy was invited to add to Curtis Analytic Partners' team-building retreat. CAP does market research and analysis for pharmaceuticals and claims to be able to discern causalities in the marketplace.
For CAP, we built a program around both of these features. First, the misleading nature of large populations and that many different things can look the same from a distance. We "un-fried" an egg, made things disappear, boil, and generally played with looking closer at everyday things. Then we turned the focus to bonding, effort sharing, beds of nails, and more. The group really came together over the rich and creamy ice cream made right in front of their eyes!