Open House Idea for 2007
Thanks to Tom's comment on my previous post, I just had an idea for an Open House theme.
We've been talking about doing a Mythbusters theme for some time now - however, to bust many of the urban legends they do on the TV show requires more time, money, and fire department supervision than the physics club has available. On the other hand, we have an awesome new demo with exploding liquid nitrogen that several people would like to see be part of the Open House. And now the aforementioned comment links to cool demos with materials that don't act the way you'd expect.
How do we bring all that together?
What if the myths we bust aren't urban legends, but things that people have come to believe from their everyday experience. Things they've seen over and over, and "know" to be true. Things like "Explosions are hot" or "Liquids aren't hard." How about "Things fall backward in a car that's accelerating forward"? We can reassemble our general relativity cart & bust that myth into the ether!
Physics is, in part, about looking for patterns in our observations. But it is also about getting geeked when something doesn't fit the pattern. I think we can bring that excitement to kids in our Open Houses in 2007.
If people like this idea, let's think of some more surprising-behavior demos. We can talk about it at the meeting this Thursday. There is a meeting Thursday right? We got together the last week before break, but that wasn't a meeting, it was a party. Did I get that right? Secretary? President? Anyone?
5 comments:
"The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment."
~Celia Green, The Decline and Fall of Science, 1972
There is a meeting this week. Since the last official meeting was the week before break, not the party. And that sounds like a very awesome idea for the open house. It should be fun and interesting.
I think that would be awesome! I knew we could pull off something close to the Mythbusters. I have a beret in my closet to add to the Augie Mythbusters. :)
I'm not sure if this would be an idea for just Physics but if ALL the science departments would part take in a Science Day, where we have/or don't have a theme but do a ton of demonstrations, etc. This could also just be a seperate thing as we would do the Mini Mythbusters open house as the Physics thing.
Sounds Like a good plan! I dont know if we can go as neat as Mythbusters but hey you never know! What about the Possibility of making a Rube Goldberg Machine? Just throwing it out there.
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