Adler Astro-Overnight

Location: Adler Planetarium

Date: Friday, March 06, 2015; 5:00-10:30 pm

I had only been to this event once last year and then a group of little girls had made me work like never before.  I arrived early and after checking in, was waiting in the lobby when one person walked over and asked if they could borrow an Astronomy journal that was on the table in front of me.  I learned that her name was Andrea and she was a show operator here.  Also, she was getting her masters in ‘Astro Physics’ and was headed to her first poster session in 2 weeks.  I told her about my experience with posters and yeah, I have done some posters in my time.  “Do it like you are explaining to kids”, I said.  Well, easy for me to comment, but then kids can also be a handful!

Don't make these guys mad!

There were a lot of youth volunteers today – which makes sense for a kids program – along with a few adult volunteers.  Michael came over and said there were 3 main activities that we would be doing – “Egg Drop”, “Dry Ice” and “Angry Birds”.  Most of the volunteers were familiar with that and so started scheduling themselves to their favorite activity.  Michael wanted the new volunteers – myself included – to go for a tour.  Our first stop was ‘Johnson Theater’ where “Angry Birds” was set up.  Just like the video game, there would be structures with plush toy piggy’s on boxes that were the forts; and plush toy birds would be launched at them using sling shots.  As volunteers, our job was to encourage the kids to think critically on how they could achieve a perfect trajectory and also help in rebuilding the forts.  “Dry Ice” station had the usual components like “canister rockets”; “crystal ball” etc. and that would be straight forward.  Then there was the “egg drop” which I had done last time.  The difference was that instead of a ladder, there was now a crane like thing that is used for street work and someone would be up there to drop the designs.

Michael asked me to do “pocket science” and sighed when, once again, I picked “Smelly Space”. I collected 3 samples –‘Sagittarius’, ‘Moon’ and ‘Titan’ and started walking around.  We had a big crowd with parents and kids walking about and they were split in 4 color groups - with wristbands, in order to ensure that everyone got in and out of shows as per their group.  A gentleman showed me on the map where his group would be camping that evening and asked about the location.  I took him around for a tour of the museum and in the end we ended up on the same spot!  As usual, I was lost.

After leaving him in capable hands, I went upstairs to the planets section and the kids were busy with their designs for “egg drop” – complete with balloons etc.  I saw a family of 3 where the mom was telling the attendant that they had missed their show due to her losing track of the time and if they could come back for a later showing.  I said that I could entertain them for a while and so engaged the kid in the “smelly space” experiment with some prompting from his parents.  It is a slightly different tact when you do this with kids instead of adults, but the objective always is not to be too condescending.  This was proven in this case where the boy was answering intelligently.

After this I was walking about, trying to see if anyone would be interested in this experiment, but it’s not that easy in this setting as it is with adults, since kids are more interested in getting to their activities.  I went over to the “Angry Birds” room and saw that the kids had built interesting designs with the boxes.  I went to help some kids who were not getting the right trajectory with the slingshot, partly due to not having enough force or not getting low enough with the elastic bands.  Some even had their elastic bands entangled.  The trick was to first stabilize the birds in the harness and then releasing them.  I tried my hand at flinging a bird or two and it wasn’t all that easy.  But it was kind of therapeutic, especially when the boxes came tumbling down.

A couple of kids came in with their mom and they were very well behaved, waiting for their turn rather than being impatient like some others.  Plus, they were really nice to each other, the older one wanting the younger to have a go first and the younger one was listening to his brother.  The older brother was quite inventive and was improvising with each unsuccessful attempt, till he finally hit the target.  I then challenged him to make a “dominoes” type structure where the boxes would topple in a sequence.  He was intrigued by that and build such a tower and then he and his brother took turns at it as their mom watched.  I told them that if they succeeded, I would show them something cool and when they did get everything to topple, I took them through the “smelly space” exercise.  The older boy was quite good at it and at the end I asked if he wanted to be a scientist and he said no, a Zoologist.  I told him and his mom to go to Lincoln Park Zoo and ask someone in a green shirt to see if they could talk to a zoologist.

There was a group of adults standing there and I said that I could entertain them as they waited for the kids to finish.  I did the routine with them and saw that a couple of them were translating in sign language for a deaf teacher.  And they did it for every single word I spoke, including my joke that ‘Sagittarius’ smelt of Rum, which I couldn’t tell the kids.  At the end I said that this was a perfect experiment since we were converting our visual sense into an olfactory sense and that’s why them using sign language to interpret was somehow fitting.  

I walked about the “Planet Explorers” section and saw some of the kids activities which are never open during “Adler After Dark”, such as an area called “Spacewalk”, which is a pitch dark room with point lights inside to resemble stars.  It was one of the more extraordinary areas of the museum that I had never seen before.  I stopped at the “Egg Drop” to watch the designs and a mom and daughter came over and asked me to help the little girl build her “lander”.  I did a terrible job with the scotch tape and even contributed to two balloons bursting, causing the mom to give up on me and walk away thinking that I was incompetent.  With this fiasco, I went back to the “Angry Birds” station and saw that one of the youth volunteers had taken charge and was doing this in an organized way.  She had 4 teams of 3 kids each and each team built the other team’s fort, in order to make it difficult to break.  Then each launch was simultaneous and on a countdown.  This reduced the madness and kids actually liked this competition.  On a later visit I saw that this volunteer had left and there was chaos regaining all over again, with one consolidated fort and kids just running into it!

At 9:15 pm I went back to the volunteer office to drop off supplies and then proceeded to the Mezzanine level for my next task.  They had asked me to stay back an hour till 10:30 pm to help with the “Scavenger Hunt”.  I sat at the registration to hand out forms which had 6 questions, and answers to which could be found all over the museum.  Also on it was a bonus question on their favorite planet or satellite to visit.  The idea was to get kids to go get the answers and once they did, we were giving them a prize – a magnifying glass – irrespective if the answers were right or not.  The entire activity was designed to keep everyone occupied till 10:15 pm when they would be allowed to take their sleeping bags and go camp out...or in the museum. 

It was interesting to read everyone’s answers, especially to the bonus question.  We were also asking the kids to fill out a brief fun survey which comprised of 3 questions.  The mom from my first “Smelly Space” experiment was offended that we were asking her son to do it and I said that even if he didn't, he would still get the prize.  I would pretend to correct the questions in order to give everyone enough time to complete the survey and then hand them their magnifying glass.  At one stage I was asked to go stand at the door of the room where sleeping bags were stored since parents had started carrying them out to set up the camp when we were not ready.  I stood inside the room and tried my best, while incurring some parent’s wrath.  In the end seeing how everyone was getting irritated, we let them take their stuff earlier.  I stayed at the table for some time and then left at 10:30 pm, extremely tired.  It had been a session where I had contributed the least.  But I had also learned a lot about kids and their ability to get to the heart of a problem faster than adults.  I saw Andrea on my way out and wished her well, asking her to keep the presentation simple.  A lesson well learnt this evening.