Iowa State Fair '16: Super STEM Sunday

Charlotte turned 6 years old on the 18th, so when we went to the last day of the fair, it was the first time we had to pay her admission.

Admission is half price on "Super Sunday," so she only cost us three dollars, but still. It's a sign that things are just going uphill from here. No time to ponder that though, we still had a day at the fair to enjoy.

I don't know how long my pinball hobby will hold my complete interest. I've got a project machine in the garage, but its about 90% complete. Soon I'm going to need something else to work on. The fair had a motorcycle show going on, and I spotted this vintage Kawasaki floating around in a sea of Harley Davidson customs. It reminded me that I've wanted a small, 60s era motorcycle since high school, so maybe I'll try to find a bike from this era for a project.

Speaking of projects, Daphne entered some baking items at the fair. Last year she earned a second place ribbon. We stopped by the Food Center to see if any of her entries made it to the final display case.

Hey! Her cookie made it in the ice cream sandwich contest.

White ribbon!

 How did her 4-layer S'more bars do?

Well, you can't do much better than that.

Imagine Daphne yelling, "Yea!", jumping up and down three times, and clapping her hands at the same time. It was so fun to watch her light up like that. Charlotte was almost as excited as her mom. 

I didn't jump up and down, but I was pretty happy with the loose meat sandwich that I ate a few minutes later. 

We tried the Pride of Iowa Wrap because Kim recommended it. "It boasts a jalapeno cheddar tortilla with pork shoulder, sweet corn salsa, and hickory smoked bacon bits. Layered with cheddar jack cheese, fresh avocado relish, chipotle aioli and crispy tortilla bites for added texture."- ISF website.

There's a lot going on in there, but's it's all good.

Time to pose with the giants pumpkins!

I've yet to have a drink at the Iowa Beer Craft tent. That's because nothing beats an ice cold glass of milk from the Dairy Barn on a hot fair day. Somehow I never get to drink the whole thing, though.

Cotton Candy + Char = A Five-Minute Sugar Rush. She jumps around yelling, "Cot-ton Can-dee" about 100 times in a row in some weird made up accent. Strangers notice... It makes us laugh.

There was also some STEM activities for the kids to watch.  I couldn't hear the presenters as well as I would have liked, but I think this is what happens when you play with liquid nitrogen and gummy bears. Look how thick the smoke gets.

They used compressed air to shoot a ping pong ball through a pop can.

More fun with liquid nitrogen.

Right before the guy in last video got covered in all that stuff, he walked by me, slapped my chest with that back of his hand and said, "That's a sweet shirt." That was cool.

This is probably my favorite thrift store tee to wear to the fair.

It kept me safe on the zip line last year.

Too bad I have to put it away until next August...

See You in Six Months

Charlotte has been excited about going to the Science Center of Iowa for weeks. On Saturday they opened the Geometry Playground, and they were also having "Spooky Science" exhibits for Halloween.

Bat Girl was pumped to explore the geometric bat caves, but she was disappointed that you had to be seven in bat years to play on the main geometrical structure. 

It was pretty cool when the Spooky Scientists sealed a bowl full of dry ice with a bubble.

What do you call wearing a mask over your mask? Politics? I don't know, but it's cute.

Char thought that the round mirror experiments were fascinating. 

Before we went into the Science Center we strolled through the neighboring Farmers' Market. It was the last market of the season, and so it was our last chance to enjoy some of our favorite foods. I didn't mind Saturday's gloomy weather. It's easier to say goodbye when the wind and the cold speed you on your way.

Here's my final bite of a Chef Steve's pork kabob.

The last of the poffertjes went down easy.

Daphne got the last bite of our BLT pita.

The pita and the poffertjes were made by the people who run the Breakfast Delights stand. They have great food and are great people. They personify what makes the Downtown Farmers' Market so special.

By the time we left the Science Center all the market venders were gone, and the parked cars had reclaimed their territory.

I might have been sad at the thought of not eating down here for half a year, but then I remembered all that Halloween candy that Char has left. I'm not above raiding that bowl! Let's go home!

Bag 'o Science

I took Charlotte to the Science Center of Iowa two weekends ago, and during the car ride all Char could talk about were the things she had done in the "Small Discoveries" area last June. I don't even know how she could remember all of that from eight months ago, but people say that kids don't miss a thing, and I have discovered that to be true (most of the time). 

As soon as we bought tickets, Char threw off her coat and bolted around the corner to find the "Small Discoveries" room. It was blocked with an "Under Construction" sign, and I could hear Char's outburst, "Ohhhh Noooooo!" before I could catch up to her. She cried for about a minute, but she calmed down, and the Science Center had a lot of other distractions for her to enjoy. We had a blast, and I wrote about most of our day there in an earlier post. 

What I didn't tell you was that one of the distractions was in a large, conference room with a "Girls In Science" sign pointing to it.

Char likes Sid the Science Kid on PBS and They Might Be Giants's Here Comes Science songs, so I thought we'd give it a whirl. We weren't too sure about the "bug lady" and her Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. The insect was endlessly running on her hand-over-hand-over-hand treadmill, but we leaned in for a peek and learned that the cockroaches only hiss when they're scared.

(Char was squeezing my had too tightly for me to take a picture of our own, so I found Ryan Somma's similar picture on flickr.)

There was a display that allowed you to compared ape skulls to human skulls, but I assumed that was about evolution, and so I steered us clear of that. I don't think Char's ready to understand the grey-area-glue that holds science and religion together in my belief system. For instance, I believe in the science that is practiced by doctors, but after watching my daughter being born in a hospital I have no doubt that God exists.

Luckily, Char was too enthralled with the polyacrylamide polymers to notice the old bones. These tiny spheres are hydrophilic, and the water they like to absorb causes them to swell to sizes you wouldn't think possible. A couple of the polymers on the table were the size of tennis balls. Plus, they're "squishy and they bounce"!

Best of all, the fine folks from Flint Hills gave Char some polymers of her own to grow at home.

When compared to the size of the text on the paper, you can see how small the spheres were.

Following the instructions, we used distilled water from the grocery store so the water would have as few impurities as possible. After soaking for a few days, the spheres grew to the size of a quarter. It became a ritual to "check our project" each morning.

Since they're now mostly composed of water, the spheres disappear when you put them back into the bowl.

The idea was to grow them as large as we could, and then let them dry back down to original size so we could try different liquids. Well, that was my idea anyway. Char's idea was to poke the spheres with her finger and laugh when they shattered into wiggly pieces. We did get one sphere to survive a week of poking and bouncing, and he got to be pretty big.

Let's zoom in.

So, after a couple of visits to the Science Center and a successful science experiment at home, does Charlotte want to grow up and have a job a scientist?

"No, I want to do all of the jobs!"

I think exposure activities like "Girls In Science" help make that possible. Thanks, Science Center.