Kia V's blog

Cinco De Mayo Day!!! N Spiderman 3!! Yaaahh!!! >.<

Sat, 05 May 2007 15:51:09 -0500

The team went out to do an outreach today for Cinco De Mayo day at South Robert Street. It was fun seeing the kids getting excited about what was going on. The weather didn't work to our liking because it was cloudy and gray this morning that later on around 1:30 it started to sprinkle and after that it poured for a little while, so the team left early around 2. Instead of staying until 4 like it was planned. But on the up side the we did worked with some of the kids that were interested in learning about what projects we were doing, these projects were: thaumtropes, infrared goggles, and pinhole cameras.

The team also played a fun game involving balloons being tied to your ankles. The objectives of this game is the step on the other peoples' balloon while at the same time avoid getting your balloon stepped on. Sounds easy enough to play, but its super hard! Especially when everyone is so competitive. So yeah my balloon popped in like the first 5 seconds after Rachel yelled start. It very sad...but it was fun!!!

Oh i can't wait to go watch Spiderman 3 today!! But the downside to it that everyone that I know had seen it and they said that its not good. So I guess I'll find out for myself wrether I like it or not. >.< I'm just hoping that it wouldn't be a waste of $5 watching it tonight.

Native American Day @ the SMM!!!

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:45:28 -0500

Today is Native American Day @ the SMM, the team went up to check it out after everyone was done with their research on vocal cord jepordy. We also saw a clip on vibration. The clip was about how vibration could create different waves depending on the pitch of the sound that is being put on it. We went up to the floor and saw a part of the drumming that the drummers had put on to see. I thought it was really cool how they value mother nature so much and she had given to them and everyone around. It ws fun!!

Work...work...work!!!!

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:53:12 -0500

For the pass few weeks the team has gone to do a few more outreaches!! One of the outreaches was at the College of St. Catherines. It was a fun experience, having to work all those girls from different schools and grades! It was a tiring day at the end but we made a lot of projects, rubberband boats, balloon powered cars, and straw rockets. Its also good to see that young kids are thinking about science and not just us older kids. It was a blast!!

Now Hannah and I are working on trying to makae our crystal radio work. We're working hard so cheer us on you guys!!! (^_^)

Hey!!! Omg, we're so tired that we're all sleeping on the ground! Hannah makes a good pillow!! Thanks a bunch Hannah!!!

Getting there....

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 14:24:15 -0600

The Make It Team is working very hard on getting our projects into mini size so that they would fit into the balls that we have to put them in. So far the team has about 7 to 9 projects to fit into the balls. We're also working on making good but short and small print instructions to put into the ball. ( I hope they fit...>.

Goop/ Bloop

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 14:25:54 -0600

Have you hear of materials called non-newtonian? Non-newtonian is a substance that acts like a solid when force is applied and becomes a fluid when you let it sit. An example of this is something called goop/bloop. This material acts like a non-newtonian. The materials that are required to make goop/bloop are just water and corn starch. Its a fun activity to do with kids of all ages as long as there are adult supervision. This is also one of the activities that the Make it Team is doing on the floor today, along with infred googles and kalidoscopes.

Straw Rockets

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:49:22 -0600

This is how you make a Straw Rocket.

Have fun making and playing with your Straw Rocket!

Saturday, December 9th was a success!

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 17:12:57 -0600

Last Saturday, the whole Make it Team went up to the floor and did four different projects:finger prints, balloon powered cars, rubber band powered boats, and thaumotropes. It was way more successful than how it was when Body World was still opened. Despite all the remarks on how its a "Ghost Town." "Its like crickets on the exhibit floors." "Deserted." The team worked hard and pulled it off with double the amount of projects needed to be made before we could all go skating this coming Saturday. Our Rubber band powered boats were really popular among the visitors, which was really good, so was the Balloon powered cars.

We mostly just cleaned up the project boxes and rearranged the things around to create more space for storage in the YSC. We putted the things that we weren't using anymore back into Ed Storage. Our project boxes are really clean and neat now. Also we got to meet our new Team Leader, Rachel, she seems cool. But Travis will always be a part of the team even though he is no longer with us.

I can't wait until we go skating on Saturday!

Rubber band Powered Boat

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:47:59 -0600

Today Naana, Hannah, and I were in Ed Storage coming up with ideas on how to make Rubber band powered boats. Hannah and Naana came up with the idea of using foam cups and spoons to make the paddles for the boats. The spoon worked the best compared with the spoon. But attaching the broken spoon onto the rubber band that was wrapped around the foam cut out boat. Then just wind the rubber band up and let it unwind, the spoon should flip and the boat should move across the tube of water.

Looker and Changer

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:32:10 -0600

Yesterday the Team played a game called Looker and Changer where you and a partner try to guess what on you had changed. The first group had only one minute to change five things on them, such as switching shirts with someone else, shoes, inside outing your shirt, sweater, untying your hair or tying it up either way it fine. Than the looker has to guess the five things on you that you had changed within the one minute that you were gone. Than everyone switches places and the looker become the changers, while the changers become the lookers. It was fun seeing everyone in their nice looking new outfits.

Here are some pictures that were taken of some of the team members in their new and improved style.

Here is a picture of John in Mai Kou's sweater.

Here is a picture of me in Cameron's cape.

Here is a picture of Keng in Nou's sweater.

Here is a picture of Nou in Keng's Polo.

Fun!

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 15:37:14 -0600

Today we were up on the floor making straw rockets and kaleidoscopes. It was slow at first but after a little while it started to pick up. There were a lot of kids and parents who were into the whole making a Straw Rocket. But there were so many people that no they started to going towards the direction of the launching area that we had set-up. There were also some people that came up to Cameron and ask really weird questions. Such as: " Is there a smoking area?" or " Where is the restroom?" and last but not least " Where is the bookstore?". But we did get a good amount of people to come over and make Straw Rockets with us!!

Last week the team was with the volunteers and learned to do light picture. It was fun because we got to try and make our own little light design pictures too.
Here are some of the light pictures that we made last week.

Saturday

Sat, 04 Nov 2006 14:20:25 -0600

On Wednesday we played a game that involved how the group could make blogging more fun.

Blogging ideas

food

sports

new current science buzz

and etc.

Everyones' ideas were great but there are somethings that we had to keep in mind that we shouldn't give out too much info about ourselves.

On Thursday we went to Museum Magnet to teach some of the kids there about three of our projects, kalidoscope, thaumotropes, and vocal cord cups. It was a lot of fun; we ate pizza too, it was really nice of them to share it with us. And I appreciated it a lot.

Click here to see how to make some of our Make it projects!

November 1st

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:34:10 -0600

Today we had a discussion about what Micheal J. Fox said on one of the campaign that he did for a democratic party member. Some people took his illness, Parkinson's ( an illness that makes the person's body shack without the body having any control), as an excuse to get more sympathy for people to vote for the democrats, but to many peoples' surprise it has nothing to do with it at all. But even in our own little discussion group their were some very different views about stem cell. Such as the idea of having to clone someone, seems really hard to believe because of the environment nowadays. But their are also people that thinks its a fine idea to be able to clone body parts to help out people that need a certain body part do to an illness or if they were in an accident. The idea of having to ability to be able to clone something that will become a huge help to evreyone is really great but there are a lot of factors to consider as well. Its hard to predict what the stem cell is going to turn out to be, even if they did do a lot of tests on it the chances of getting one of the many thousands of stem cells to work properly is going to be really tough. But not impossible anymore that to modern day technologies. On the other hand it also consumes a great deal of time to reach to goal that they had set out to accomplished. But my opinion on to stem cell reach is a good thing but it also needs so more help and may take longer than what most people may think even for myself. But I'm really excited about the idea!

Crystal Radio

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:40:23 -0500

Hannah and I are making, or more like trying to learn to make a Crystal Radio. It seems really intreseting because no one on the Make it had made one before, so it seems really cool to be the first ones learning to make something new that hadn't been made before. But its going to be a challenge. I know that we will be able to make it happen. And I get to feel like I'm an enginner. But we have to learn to make it from scratch as well. The hardest part to the project that we are doing rigth now is that its going to be hard to explain it to the little kids about what a crystal radio is, when I myself don't really know. But the fun would be that we learned something new and getting to teach it to other people, even if it seems confusing to me. But after awhile of getting to know it better I'll get the hang of what a crystal radio is and what it does and how to make one all in one very slow process. But like they say " slow and steady wins the race". So its fine, I'll take my time.

Straw Rockets

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 17:17:30 -0500

On Saturday the Team went up to the floor top teach visitors how to make straw rockets. It went really well, except for the fact that the team didn't talk much about the current story that went along with the project. Everyone was glad that there wasn't any problems with letting the kids take the rockets that they made with them, but their parents did cooperate well with us at holding on to the straw so that the kids don't shot them any where else but in the area that we had provided for them.

We had a discision on how we could improve from what we did on Saturday to help us out this coming Saturday. Here are some of the suggestions that came up:
1. Let the kids explore on how they should make a straw rocket. But at the same time we are also giving them the general guide lines of how to make the straw rockets. Such as they need a straw for the body, fins for the sides to help the rocket fly better, and to make sure that they close the end of the rocket so that it would fly.
2. have the parents help the kids of the are too young to do some of the steps. ( Because there are times when one of the team members are helping more than one person.) So letting the parents get involve will help a lot!
3. Tell the kids about the new story before letting them go on their own at making their rocket.

Overall the Straw Rockets went really well!

We also had some fun with rapping people up as mummies on the same day as we were doing the Straw Rockets. It was a loud of fun. Mai Kou and I were teamed up with Molly and she was our mummy, Keng, Cameron, and John were one group ( John was the mummy for their group, and Isabelle, Patricia, and Hanna were in one group (Patricia was their mummy). Here is a picture of all of us with our nicely rapped mummies!

Doesn't everyone look great all rapped up in toilet paper?! ^_^

Nanotechnology

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 17:41:23 -0500

On Saturday, September 16, we went up to the sixth floor to the learn about nanotechnology. At first it seemed kind of confusing but as time went by they started to explain more sbout it. LIke the game we played called Dimoc. The game goes like this, first there are eight people in each group. Then everyone is given a character to play. They had to think and be like the character that was given to them. So basically we were all pretending to become that character adn say what you think they might say if they were there. And through that game we became more aware of what other people might think of Nanotechnology.
I also did ask a lot lot lot of questions about Nanotechnology. Such as, what is nanothechnology? And nanotechnology is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very small device that is programed to do something. It is also more accruate than most technology nowaday. Now what they are thinking of doing is create nanotechnology that can go into the body and destory harmful cells, such as cancer cells for example. I also learned that some of the nanotechnology that are programed to go into the body can also come out, through peeping or pooping. But some of the nanotechnology that comes out might also cause some harm to our enviroment as well. Because of their small size going through the swege filters might not do much to help clean it up that much.

That is what some of the things that I learned form Saturday about nanotechnology!