Friday, September 24, 2010

Cool Science Resource!

I found a great website from a show that most of us grew up watching! Zoom! was a great show for kids, based right out of Boston, that engaged kids in cool science concepts and experiments. This website has a ton of great science experiments to do right at home with parents. It's also great because kids can add their comments and results on the website for others to see! Parents can get involved at home with helpful instructions that promote discussion and great family bonding!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

My Science Story

An interesting fact about me: I went to a week long girl-empowerment science camp at MIT when I was 14, right before my freshman year. There we worked with lasers, learned about how liquids become absorbed into the earth, soldered our own thumb pianos, and even built robots. Besides that, the main thing I've always enjoyed was looking at the sky during any time of the day or night. Whether I'm in class, driving somewhere, or just hanging around outside, I find myself always looking up. I love the clouds and the cool designs they can make, the stars and the beauty of a night sky out in the country, and even looking at the sky above the Boston skyline at night. In high school I took an astronomy course and we had the privilege of having a teacher who created a program for high school students that involved using high powered telescopes. We had to take pictures twice a week, of whatever we wanted; the moon, other planets, stars, supernovas, white dwarfs, and many other things in space. We got to control what time the picture was taken, whether it was taken from the telescope at MIT or in Tuscon, AZ, what quadrant of the sky it was to look at, what the picture was taken of, the quality, resolution, lens type, and color scheme. Since then I've always noticed the moon especially, and during that class I took a very cool picture of it. I remember in middle school learning about the different kinds of clouds, what level of the atmosphere they were in, as well as the different phases of the moon. I'm excited that we are doing a moon journal and I'm excited to learn how to incorporate celestial themes in the classroom!