On Thursday-18-January the Steen PTO hosted their annual Science night. This took place in the Moore Gym and had a number of displays to show scientific concepts in an interactive way. Different principal such as inertia, friction and gravity use some old magic tricks, and a new fad to demonstrate how these concepts can be be applied. The trick of removing a table cloth with touching any of the plates left on it. When Students were asked to pull a table cloth hard, and fast enough they saw how any object could stay on a table. The rapid motion of pulling the cloth reduce the amount of friction on the plates. Inertia cause the plate to stay in the space they started at. And gravity let the plates fall back on the table. A newer trick is to toss a bottle in the air and have it land standing up. This time a Student was to gentle flip a bottle fill with some water, and cause it to stand upright on a table. Gravity is what brings the bottle back down, and if done correctly the inertia of the liquid in side and the friction of two objects coming together (the bottom of the bottle and the table) should cause it to stand up.
Surface area, and surface tension were demonstration one way by seeing how many drops of water can be placed on a penny. Students used a eyedropper to slowly add a drops of water onto the surface of a penny. The surface tension of the water will start to form cohesion unit between the water molecules. This will allow more water to be added and will cause a dome of water to form over the penny. Another was making stream of water form into a twist as it came through a hole in a bottle. With the water flowing out of the bottle, a finger moved over the water flow, the surface tension is broken and the water molecules start to stick together. The cohesion of the water will cause the stream of water start to twist around.
There was an activity to show how air pressure work. Students needed to blow into the open end of a long tube. This filled with the air they were forcing into it. Once that end was closed they had a very long balloon. The added air inside had made the tube firmer, and the Students were willing test this on the backs of fellow Students. Once one end was opened and someone squeezed the other end then the force of the air came out a small wind storm.
More experiments taught how sound wave can be made from just swing a hose around in circles. Along with how sound wave can change depending on the length, and size of the tube is. How magnets can either join together, or push each other away. And gave the Students a chance to fit inside an index card. They can be done if the card is cut in the right order.
The evening was a way to show just because something that can be taught in an interesting way. And something can be fun as well as a chance to learn.
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