Friday, June 21st, 2024
Bowling Green, KY -> Bowling Green, KY
0 mi, 0 ft elevation
Before every learning festival we have done so far I start the morning with nervous butterflies in my stomach, and today was no different. We toured the Accelerate KY facility with MIT alum Sam Ford the day before and came up with a plan to organize the expected 50-60 students, but I could not help but feel uneasy managing that many middle schoolers.
We arrived early in the morning to set up all our learning festivals, and as the students came in I passed the time with them doing some physics demos. I started off by demonstrating the intermediate axis theorem with my phone (sometimes called the tennis racket theorem), talking about gyroscopes with a bike wheel, and showing off an Euler's Disk.
When the first class started I was excited to present on my topic of choice: The Physics of Sound. I had a Chladni Plate to show off standing waves and resonance. The TLDR of Chladni plates is that the sand on top of the resonating plate bounces off the anti-nodes and collects in the nodes allowing us to visualize the standing wave pattern.
We also built speakers so that I could demonstrate how they worked. While I'm sure that the students learned a lot, I think I learned much more about the dangers of mixing middle schoolers and super glue. I cannot tell you how many students super glued their fingers together. I was also surprised during my teaching when one student cut another student's hair with scissors!
It was very rewarding when the students got excited about their speakers or came to talk to me after the learning festival.
Overall I felt that the learning festival was a huge success. This was one of our largest learning festivals we have planned, and this gave us all much needed confidence moving forward. Accelerate KY provided us with some great photos from the learning festival included below sorted by lesson.
3D Printing:
Krispie Koncrete:
Strawberry DNA:
Physics of Sound:
We even made it on the local news! Afterwards we were understandably tired.
However as soon as the learning festival ended I felt myself becoming ill. I thought it was due to breathing in super glue fumes from my learning festival all day, but as the hours of stomach problems and, shall I say, bouts of rapid dehydration went on, I realized that this must be the stomach bug. Rebecca got it first, then Sophia, and now it was my turn to suffer.
Let's just say that I was not going to be able to bike the next day, but these are the realities of being on the road and I know I'll be back on my wheels in no time.