kcollins | April 2, 2010I think at some point most kids think: I want to be an Astronaut!! How cool would it be to be launched amount the stars and see the Earth from space? Many kids go through this phase, they might buy a telescope and dream up moon landings, but very few at the age of 6 decide: I'm going to be an Astronaut and actually go on to be one.
But Dr. Don Thomas did just that. He was a mere six years old on May 5, 1961, when the first Americans went into space and he thought: I want to do that. He served as an astronaut between 1994 and 1997 flew as a mission specialist on four different Space Shuttle…
kcollins | April 2, 2010iT'S day FIVE voting for the spirit of innovation awards! What are you waiting for? Check out www.conradawards.org for more information on all of the teams, their products, and to submit your vote! Have you voted yet?
Here are a few videos of teams up for the Spirit of Innovation award.
Our product, called the DiRes Chamber, manufactures parts and tools in a microgravity environment by using sound!
Here is our team's video! It tells you all about Native Sun: Who we are; what we have done; and where we are going next. Most importantly, it shows the creation and consumption of what is almost…
kcollins | April 1, 2010Day four for voting for the spirit of innovation awards is upon us. Check out www.conradawards.org for more information on all of the teams, their products, and to submit your vote! Have you voted yet?
Here are a few videos of teams up for the Spirit of Innovation award.
This video gives you some cool views of this team's ROV named "Mabel"
Check out the TJ Delta Green proposal for the Conrad awards!
Get out and vote!
kcollins | March 31, 2010Day three for voting for the spirit of innovation awards is upon us. Check out www.conradawards.org for more information on all of the teams, their products, and to submit your vote!
Here are a few videos of teams up for the Spirit of Innovation award.
The Piezo-Paper invention.
A quick demo of the robot in it's early stages of construction.--Falcon Robtics - Robot Carmen
Have you voted yet? Make sure to cast your vote for the Spirit of Innovation awards over at www.conradawards.org!
kcollins | March 31, 2010From time to time, my job requires some travel in order to run my experiments and this week I found myself in Houston, TX, yet again. Upon entering the dinning room of my hotel for breakfast I spotted a 17 year old boy with a Rubik's cube. Knowing the USA Science and Engineering Festival has a "You CAN do the Rubik's cube" competition I wondered if this young man was aware of this competition. I was itching to ask him a hundred questions but my internal investigative reporter suddenly went shy as he was sitting with his Mom and a few other peers and I quickly realized they were all speaking…
kcollins | March 30, 2010Day two for voting for the spirit of innovation awards is upon us. Check out www.conradawards.org for more information on all of the teams, their products, and to submit your vote!
Here are a few videos of teams up for the Spirit of Innovation award.
Check out what Greem MAST from Milken Community High School in L.A is doing!
And Check out Team Delicious who will take you on a date with Cynthia, a Space Matter bar, their nutrition bar, in their final commercial video.
kcollins | March 29, 2010
Yes, I admit it, I'm pretty spoiled to be living in San Diego. Eighty Degrees today and perfect blue skies was a picture perfect day to go out on a whale watching adventure. Armed with my camera I didn't know what might be out there. Would the whales be out playing? I hoped so. During the trip we spotted 3 Fin Whales (the second largest whale behind the blue whale), some sea lions and HUNDREDS of dolphins. This massive pod of dolphins we encountered were curious about the ship and came and played in our wake. It was an utmost amazing experience. But it got me thinking about what else is out…
kcollins | March 29, 2010Vote now for your favorite high school innovators! 25 top high school teams have been designing the future. Its not science fiction. Here, education meets innovation and entrepreneurship, and real science gets real. Teams have created innovative products to solve some of the grand challenges facing society. Now, they need YOU to help select the winners of the Spirit of Innovation Awards by voting online for your favorite teams. From March 29 to April 9, you can change the world, one vote at a time. Check out www.conradawards.org for more information on all of the teams, their products, and…
kcollins | March 26, 2010
Help 25 of the top high school innovators design the future! On March 29th, the Spirit of Innovation Awards challenges YOU to vote for your favorite teams and help select this year's "Pete Conrad Scholars!" Over the past 6 months, 25 finalist teams have created real products to solve some of the grand challenges facing society. From the depths of the oceans to the edges of space, these students will knock your socks off! Piezo-electric wallpaper, robotic astronaut assistants, advanced water purification systems, and Navajo Solar "Frybread" ovens; these are just a few of the amazing products…
kcollins | March 25, 2010
The USA Science and Engineering Festival pulls out the stops to get the word out about the festival! This time the Festival has recruited none other than...Albert Einstein to promote the festival at Brain Awareness Week at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Einstein talked about exciting scientific principles and got students excited about the USA Science and Engineering Festival that is going to take place in Oct 2010.
About 800 students attended Brain Awareness Week activities at the National Museum of Health and Medicine over the course of the five-day program. Students were…
kcollins | March 24, 2010
The questions that plague most scientist are: why, how, where did this come from? Answering those fundamental questions is how mysteries of the world are discovered and solved. Forensic Anthropology takes these questions a little further as these types of questions are answered in a legal domain. According to the American Board of Forensic Anthropology: Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical or biological anthropology to the legal process. Physical or biological anthropologists who specialize in forensics primarily focus their studies on the human skeleton. Much…
kcollins | March 19, 2010COPUS (Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science) organizers are thrilled to be supporting the USA Science and Engineering Festival effort, particularly by helping the scientific community connect to the festival in their own community through satellite events.
The 2010 USA Science & Engineering Festival (USASEF), provides a great opportunity for COPUS participants to rally together in support of science. Through making this event truly national in scope, we can continue the great grassroots momentum we started with Year of Science 2009.
Many COPUS participants and hubs are…
kcollins | March 17, 2010 It was announced today that the pie entered for pi day from the USA Science and Engineering Blog,
Joanna Pool's Irrationally Good Chocolate Basil pie, made it to the top 10! But we need your votes!!
How to vote:
1) Go to seriouseats.com
2) Register on the site
3) Vote!
kcollins | March 17, 2010
Stacy Jannis, who has been working tirelessly for the Festival to get the Kavli Science Video Contest up and running, was recently honored by AAAS and the National Science Foundation 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for her video "Inside the Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of Alzheimer's Disease", which she produced for the National Institute on Aging. See her video here. Learn more about the annual challenge here.
Congratulations to Stacy! Check out more of her amazing work .
~~written by Ruth Kiefer
kcollins | March 14, 2010 Old time vinegar pie
It's Pi day or Pi(e) day...either way you look at it today is 3/14 so a good excuse to eat some pie and Scienceblogs and Serious Eats have teamed up to hold a pi(e) contest. Upon discovering this contest I enthusiastically embarked upon dreaming up something fitting for the famous number. After inspiration from some of the previous year's submissions, I came up with the idea of 'irrationally good' pie, since pi is an irrational number. I wanted something that sounded like it shouldn't be in a pie, yet it was good. My main hurdle was I couldn't think of anything that…
kcollins | March 12, 2010Deadline for the tournament sign up is April 30, 2010 so there is still a little bit of time to sign up for the Rubik's cube tournament!
Are you a teacher and looking to incorporate the Rubik's cube contest into your teaching lessons? There is an orientation workshop on April 10th at the National Electronics Museum (1745 West Nursery Road, Linthicum Hts, MD 21090-2906) where we will show you how to solve the Rubik's Cube and you will hear from Teachers and Educators who already use the Rubik's Cube in their classroom. To sign up for this workshop, simply state so on the tournament…
kcollins | March 12, 2010This week we have found a couple of bloggers who have promoted the festival on their blogs! A shout out to Dr. Stephanie Chasteen at sciencegeekgirl with a blog post this week about the festival!
Do you have a blog and would like to help us get the word out about the science festival? Contact us if you have written a post about the festival. We will give you a shout out, re-post it here and link to your blog. Thanks!
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From sciencegeek girl's blog post on March 10:
USA Science & Engineering Festival - October in DC
Sorry…
kcollins | March 12, 2010I recently discovered this blog post from early January that mentions the USA Science and Engineering Festival. We would like to give a Shout out to Mary at The Open Helix Blog for her post on January 4th covering the science festival!
Do you have a blog and would like to help us get the word out about the science festival? Contact us if you have written a post about the festival. We will re-post it here and link to your blog. Thanks!
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USA Science and Engineering Festival 2010
4 January, 2010 (10:31) | General Science | By:…
kcollins | March 10, 2010
"The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery." ~~Mark van Doren
The chemical structures danced across the page as I sat trying to figure out what reaction came next. It was the beginning of organic chemistry as an undergraduate and people had warned me that o-chem would be a bit of a monster. Over that previous summer I had heard countless horror stories about how hard organic chemistry can be. As a biology/ pre-med major I had no other choice but to endure this course. Yet by the second month of class I enthusiastically soaked up the varied drawings, rapidly mastered the new…
lbock | March 8, 2010
I remember, all too painfully, in many of my high tech and life science start-ups, a common refrain from the scientists would be, "We got the device to work....it's just engineering from here." Then, invariably - millions of dollars later - I would learn (as the CEO): that's when the hard work really begins. It's one thing to get one device to work; it's another big thing to get the next hundred devices to all work.
When I set out to start the "USA Science Festival" and received a phone call from Chuck Vest, the President of the National Academy of Engineering, suggesting that I should…