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Now that the dust has settled, here are a few thoughts on this year's
Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Fellow attendees, feel free to share
your own impressions.
I noticed that this year's festivities included:
THINGS NEVER SAID BEFORE AT THE ASTC CONFERENCE
(OR ANYWHERE ELSE)
"The food at this conference is great!"
No, not the convention center food - which was, sadly, much as ever -
but the fact that the convention center was right next to Reading
Terminal Market, home of many great eats and possibly the
foodiest-smelling place on earth.
"Alright! I've got an ulcer AND tapeworm!"
These words were spoken by a cohort who was lucky enough to find that
his bag had not one but two of the greatest giveaways in convention
history: plush microbes. www.giantmicrobes.com
<http://www.giantmicrobes.com/> (I got the T-4 Macrophage.)
"We call it the Elephant's Cappacino"
It's always good to have lots of sessions that are hands-on, and filled
with concrete examples of things our museum can actually do. This year,
there were several such sessions that were excellent: Doing Science and
Math Indie-Style, When the Materials do the Teaching, and Chemistry
Programs that get Great Reactions. [The cappacino, btw, is a smaller but
safer + cheaper version of the Elephant's Toothpaste demo; just take a
paper coffee cup, add a bit of liquid dish soap, some 6% hydrogen
peroxide and a tsp or so of yeast. Do not drink.]
"I'm creating a copying error that will lead to a freakish mutant made
of LEGO."
Props to my outreach cohorts, as I suspect no session had as much
variety as NEON (the National Education Outreach Network). Kathy
Vandiver of the MIT Museum showed us about their exhibit, Learning Lab:
The Cell, and something invented herself --- manipulative models of DNA
made from magnets and LEGO.
"I'd never use more than 20 batteries"
Also at NEON, Steven Walvig of The Bakken Museum treated us to a demo
where you can shock yourself with a simple combo of aluminum tape,
gator-clip wires and 9-volt batteries. Outreachers enjoy this sort of
thing. (I certainly hope the CEO sessions had execs zapping each
other...) Some of us wondered: "What would happen with 21 batteries?"
"Nothing tops off breakfast like dehydration and diarrhea."
Strange, yet true. Keynoter Steven Johnson opened the Saturday morning
kick-off breakfast with a really good talk about his book, "The Ghost
Map", about the 1850's London cholera epidemic
"Ah, the music of the armonica."
I knew that Ben Franklin invented an instrument called the armonica, but
had never heard one until Mikey Cassalaina of FI played one at the Live
Demonstration Hour. It's pretty cool. Extra props to Mikey and the rest
of the Franklin's Traveling Science Show team for great presentations at
a slew of sessions: NEON, Outreach Live, From Peewee to Piaget, The Fire
This Time, and their off-the-chain performance at the Saturday night
bandstand party.
"It's a butt-operated exhibit!"
Personally, I thought the best exhibit at the host Franklin Institute
was the children's room, "KidScience: Island of the Elements". It's not
exactly for tots, more the 5-8-ish range, though I liked plenty of the
stuff there, too. It came complete with a storyline, characters, and
separate areas of experiments on light/shadows, water, earth and air.
The latter featured foghorns of different lenths that were indeed
triggered by sitting on them.
"Boy, the Philly sports fans sure are in a good mood."
Thank you, Chase Utley.
Til Texas,
Jonah Cohen
Outreach & Public Programs Manager
The Children's Museum
"That's the problem with being a chemist. You never actually think."
-Dr. Barnaby Fulton, "Monkey Business"
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