Location: Adler Planetarium
Date: Thursday, March 17, 2016; 5:00-10:00
pm
Tonight’s theme was “Geek
Chic”, which is always a guest favorite, especially since it was the same
week as the “Comic Book Convention”, “C2E2”. I arrived earlier than usual and went over to
chat with my fellow volunteers. Around
us people were dressing up for “Cosplay”
and we saw an entire battalion of “Storm
Troopers” from “Star Wars”. This was going to be fun. There were just 5 of us volunteering tonight,
and so we would be rushing from shift to shift.
We also had 2 facilitators who would be helping out and one of them was
dressed in some character called “Dr.
Horrible”, someone I had never heard of.
But he was a big comic book nerd and so he and I got into the upcoming “Batman v Superman” movie as well as
discussing “Marvel vs DC”. Looking at the schedule, I was on 3 different
stations this evening and also was going to attend a lecture, like last
time. This one was on “Earth Like Planets” and life on
them. Yep, it was going to be fun.
 |
| We had to get this guy to fly |
We went on a walking tour next and first stop was in the “Community Classroom” and it was called “Superman”. There was a cylinder mounted on top of a
blower to form some sort of a vertical “Wind
Tunnel”. The guests would use one of the “Lego figurines” that we had lying around, and also a bunch of
material that was lined up in some containers - such as threads, cardboard,
scissors, pinches, fabric, coffee filters, cups etc. - to build some sort of a "cape" for the figure and then pop it into the tube. There were different tapes at various
intervals on the cylinder, including a green tape at the top signifying “kryptonite”, yellow tape a few inches
below signifying the “yellow sun” and
then a red tape below, which was the “red
sun”. The idea was to get “Superman” to fly between the yellow and
the green marks. It looked like it would
be a handful to cleanup at the end, but then someone said that we could tell
the guests that for the last hour, you should only use things that you find on
the floor, thus prompting them to clean up by default. Genius!
The next station was called “Magneto”, where we had all sorts of activities with
magnetism. There was one activity where
the guests had to build a contraption with a paper clip at the end of it. The objective was to get the clip to “stand up” by placing it below a magnet,
without actually touching it. Next to it
was a station with “Ferrofluid” and
one could have tons of fun with it, since it is essentially magnetized fluid
that organizes in a pattern around a magnet.
Next to it were a couple of battery powered gloves, that get magnetized
and one could wave their hand over paper clips etc. and pick them up. Next was some “Ferromagnetic” putty, which looked like “Silly Putty”, but “ate”
magnets when you put on top of them – like quicksand. Then we had the most interesting thing that I
have seen. It was some sort of a plate,
where a magnetic disc could be suspended in the air above it. The trick was to get the disc exactly
centered, since it kept crashing down to the sides due to attraction. You had to find the exact spot where the
repulsive forces were the maximum, in order to get the ring to float in the
air. The last things at this station
were long tubes made of different materials such as Copper and PVC and a study
of how metallic things went down the tubes at different rates. This was because
of the magnetic field that was created within the copper tube.
The final stop was a table outside "Planet Explorers", which was called “The Invisible Woman”. As with ‘Magneto’,
there were several stations, starting with the laser unit and lenses that I had
worked with earlier. The idea was to show
how things can be made “invisible” by
“bending” the light using
lenses. Next to it was the “Refractive Index” setup with oil and
glass, where a glass beaker was being made “invisible”
by immersing it in vegetable oil – another experiment that I had done
before. Then there was the “reversing arrows” station, where the
arrows changed direction when you you look at them through the water. Finally, we had a tub of water with a tiny
opening that had been taped. If you
shown a laser pointer through the opening and removed the tape, the water would
flow through it and the light would travel along the stream, demonstrating how
data is transmitted via light in “fiber optics” – without the water of
course.
My first shift was at the “Superman” station and I went down
to it. Initially no one was coming, but
then a couple showed up, where the guy was wearing a “Batman” shirt. Apparently
both of them were indeed “Batman”
fans, but took up the challenge of making a “Superman”. Soon the room started filling up, including a
girl who was wearing a mask and said that she remembered me from the previous
time where I had done the “Dark Energy”
routine with her using the “Hoberman
Sphere”. She said that she had in
fact purchased one of those for her kids.
Another satisfied customer I suppose.
People were coming up with creative designs and most of the successful
ones included the use of a coffee filter, which provided the best “drag”.
I was impressed with the persistence of people and many kept changing
their designs – making them heavier or lighter – till they finally got their “Superman” to hover between the two
colored bands.
At 7 pm I went over to my next shift, which was at the “Invisible Woman” station. As guests came in, I would start by asking how
it was that we could see each other, and the answer was of course, light. Then I would use the Laser and show them how
we could pick a point where someone could be standing, and the laser beams were
coming straight at that point, meaning that the person there could see the
source of the light. As soon as you put
a “concave lens” in between, the
laser beams diverged and passed around the point, meaning we were changing the
path of the beam and disrupting the view.
Then I would mention how telescopes worked by using a “concave” and a “convex lens”. I would then take them through the “invisible beaker”
inside the oil and explain how it was all because of the “Refractive Indices” of materials.
People are always amazed with this one.
People were also interested at seeing the arrows reversing direction
when viewed through the water. However,
the last one was the most interesting, as one member would point the laser
through the hole and the light would travel down the stream of water. All the people who came here liked this
demonstration and said so.
At 8 pm I went down to “Johnson Theater” for my lecture and quite a few people had assembled for it. The lecturer, who was a professor at ‘University of Wyoming’, was incredibly
engaging. Not only did she show some
data on how “exoplanets” are
discovered, she also used some examples from pop-culture, such as “Star Wars”, “Avatar” etc., as examples to discuss how life could evolve on
those planets, and if they could even exist.
I had a great time, as did others in the audience. At 9 pm I went over to my final shift at “Magneto”. One of the staff members was helping at this
station and he had gotten the hovering disc to work, and it looked fantastic. Someone had also built a contraption to get
the pin to stand up without touching the magnet, something which I had thought
would be difficult to do. The magnetic
gloves weren’t working, but the “Ferrofluid” was. It was also dirty and
gotten all over people’s hands. But they
didn’t mind, since it was also beautiful to look at, as one could use a pipette
to put the drops on a magnet and see them organize periodically as
bubbles. I took over that activity and
promptly got the black stuff on my hands.
One guy came over to work on building a tower with the paper clip
activity and to his credit, stuck with it for a long time and succeeded. Kudos to him for his persistence. At 9:30 pm we started the clean-up and
packing process and did it to the best of our abilities, and I was able to
leave at 10 pm.
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