Adler Astro-Overnight

Location: Adler Planetarium

Date: Friday, June 06, 2014; 5:00-10:00 pm

Another Adler visit

During the school year, Adler opens its doors to kids for a night of camping inside the museum.  It is one of the most sought out events and rightfully so.  There was nothing like this while I was growing up and if there had been something, I would have been all over it.  They needed ‘Education Hosts’ to help out during the early part of the evening and I signed up readily. Teaching science to little kids - what could go wrong!  I arrived and after checking in went to the conference room where other volunteers and staff had assembled.  I chatted with couple of volunteers who were managing the telescopes and they were quite experienced at it, with one of them having done this for over 10 years.  I asked them what the coolest thing was that they had seen and while I would have settled for the moon, they talked about some nebulae!  Yeah, I was a novice over here in more ways than one.

Michael told us that there were several activities that had been planned for the kids coming in this evening.  We were expecting about 451 guests – almost all of them kids; in fact girls - and they were split into 4 teams, “Venus”, “Mars”, “Jupiter” and “Saturn”.  Nothing like a bit of competition to keep kids engaged.  Most of them were between 6-10 years of age and if they finished 5 activities and got a check mark for that in their booklet, they got a “certificate of completion”.  Michael said that our biggest challenge was preventing the dad from taking over.  He then started assigning duties for the 4 stations that we had and by far the most popular was something called “Star Gazing”.  Everyone wanted that and Michael assigned 2 volunteers to that one.  The other stations were, “Rocket Launchers”, “Egg Landing” and “Robot Arm”.  Michael said that I was with him.  

An "Egg Lander!"

We started doing the rounds of all 4 stations by first visiting the popular “Star Gazing” station, where we were making an “astro chart”.  Michael asked me when my birthday was and I said that it was next week!  Then he asked me to pick the time of day and after that we aligned the chart to see which Constellations were visible at that time from Chicago’s latitude.  For the first time I learned that my birth constellation, “Gemini”, is not visible because the sun was over then at that time.  Hence we call it “The sun sign”.  Wow, I didn't know that.  We continued to the “Robotic Arm”, which was set up in a room and we were building “an arm” using two cardboard strips, string and pin hooks.  Michael said that he had seen kids make some interesting designs with just these basic components.  There was also a real robotic arm here, which we had kept at the back; else kids would only play with that.  Next we visited the “Planet Explorer’s” section where the “Rocket Launcher” experiment had been set up.  This was the same project that we had done in our boot camp, and over here the kids would be sending balloon rockets to the ceiling.  Final project was “Egg Landing”, which was in the small room next to the gift shop and over here we were simulating the landing of the shuttle on Mars – with bubbles all around to protect against impact from the fall.  The idea was for the kids to build something similar to protect an egg in a cup, and which would subsequently be dropped from the top of a ladder!

I was now on my own and the first stop was the "Robotic Arm".  There was another volunteer in there and she said that she had been doing these ‘Astro Overnight’s’ for a while.  Soon 3 little girls came in with their chaperon and were quite excited when we told them what they would be building.  One of the girls was all business and very smart.  She was on the top of her game, as were the others.  The did not require any coaching and just as things were getting interesting, Michael came and got me for my next posting at “Rocket Launcher”.  There was a big crowd over here and we had 4 strings, meaning 4 groups of people could be doing the project at the same time.  I took over one area and boy was it popular!  All the kids were lining up to make balloons and they were actually “thinking” about how they were going to do this.  Some would start to tie a knot in the balloon and then stop and think that they actually required the opening for the thrust.  Once we were ready to go, I would lead the countdown and we would cheer when the rocket was released.  We soon ran out of the round balloons and so had to open a pack of long balloons, meaning that they weren't making good rockets.  I made some adjustments by supporting them with straws and soon we were able to get them to slide smoothly.

After a mad rush many kids went for shows and so Michael posted me at “Egg Landing”.  A lot of girls were already engaged in designing safe landing equipment for their astronaut – the egg.  There was a ladder and one volunteer was stationed on top, dropping the contraptions down into a tray filled with flour like stuff – to resemble a planet’s surface.  At first the girls started with a plastic egg and after testing their theory, were allowed to move to the real one.  I relived the volunteer on the ladder and climbed up to be the “egg dropper”.  For the next hour little girls would come with all sorts of designs for their “lander” and I would count down and then drop into the pan below.  The girls would then excitedly check see if their astronaut had survived and would be delighted if that was true.  Oh gravity.  What would we do without you!  The designs were interesting with things like all sided balloons, parachutes, two cups filled with padding, something like a hot air balloon etc.  Surprisingly many eggs survived, even though one girl was determined to crack her egg and was disappointed when it kept surviving!

Standing precariously on the rung of a ladder was tiring, but I had a blast doing it, being encouraged by the limitless enthusiasm of the kids.  Michael next posted me at the “Star Gazer”, where I worked with a father-daughter pair and I amazed them with the little tidbit that I had learnt regarding the “Sun Signs” earlier in the evening.  I then went upstairs and sat at a table where the kids would eventually come to show that they had completed their tasks and get their “certificate of completion”, which was really a stamp on their book.  I was to then give them a form for a scavenger hunt of the museum.  Some kids came in and I asked them about their favorite task before giving them a stamp and saying that they had graduated.  Then I would send them on their scavenger hunt where one of the questions was, “If you met an alien, what would you say to them?”  That usually got them thinking.

My time was up and Michael asked if I wanted to stay and watch ‘Star Wars’ on the big screen inside their auditorium.  Normally I would have jumped at an opportunity to do so with this team, but I had a busy day coming up and so I left.  It had been a fantastic evening with the little girls who were some of the most enthusiastic creatures that I had seen.  It completely debunked any misconception people may have that only boys liked Physics and Astronomy.  These girls had been curious and hands-on…and had definitely taught me a thing or two.