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Happy Holidays from Cool Science
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Winter 2015/16 News
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Please Help Support Cool Science
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If you like our brand of fun and engaging educational STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math), please consider tossing us a couple bucks so we can pay our bills, replace the supplies we use and buy a few more cool toys! Your generous gift allows us to bring Cool Science shows, workshops and other hands- on activities to schools year-round throughout the front range and eastern Colorado at a price they can afford (often completely free)- and keeps our Big Cool Science Festival at CC (each April) and Kid's Mini Fruitcake Toss free for everyone.
There are two easy and secure ways to support Cool Science this year. From now until December 31st if you live in the Colorado Springs area you can donate through the CS Independent's Give! Campaign- and choose from a variety of great rewards. Just click on the big "Give!" button below to go directly to our page on the Give! website where you can make a donation in any amount. All credit card transaction fees are covered by Give!, and every dollar you donate will also be matched thanks to grants from the Air Academy Federal Credit Union Foundation and the El Pomar Foundation. It's a great way to leverage your donation for maximum support of Cool Science programs!
After December 31st, and throughout the year, you can donate on our website using the Community First Foundation's Colorado Gives. Either way, THANKS!
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Cool Science Links
& Social Media
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Volunteer
For even more info about upcoming events, fun experiments to try at home, videos, science jokes and great links to other websites be sure to
Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter & subscribe on Youtube!
(Please give us some social media love so we'll feel more popular!)
We've haven't quite figured out blogs yet, and updating our website daily is just too much work, so for over a year now we've been using
Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to post something cool or fun to do
almost every day from our own archives or stuff we like on other websites. It's a great
resource for teachers or parents looking for STEM activities.
It's also the best way to ask us questions or give us feedback. And you don't need a Facebook, Twitter or Youtube account to scroll through and read all of our past postings.
Check it out!
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Please Thank and Support our Corporate and Foundation Donors
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The Schuster Family Foundation
The J.V. Bruni Foundation
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We Need More Cool Science Volunteers!
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If you're an adult (or a responsible high school student) who likes science, math or engineering, and enjoys working with young aspiring scientists we want you as a Cool Science volunteer!
We especially welcome working or retired scientists and engineers (and love to partner with local tech companies), but don't worry if you aren't a scientist, we'll show you everything you need to know, and you'll get to play with our cool toys first!
The time commitment is completely up to you- once a year or once a week.
If you're interested just email [email protected] and we'll get you started.
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Dear Cool Science Fan,
It's a very busy time of year, so we'll keep this update brief.
Cool Science needs your support more than ever this year in the Give! campaign, as we're currently languishing near the bottom and at risk of losing our matching grants! We know you love our programs because attendance at our big events
keeps growing, like the Kid's Mini Fruitcake Toss (featured in this newsletter) and the Big Cool Science Festival at Colorado College (April 2nd- mark your calendar, we'll have more info on that soon). But as these events grow in size they cost us much more as well, not to mention the hundreds of smaller programs we do each year.
Please help us with a tax-deductible donation if you can, and encourage your friends.
Now on to the fruitcakes, catapults and super cool water...
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3rd Annual Kid's Mini Fruitcake Toss
& Catapult Engineering Workshops
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by Mark Reis (C.S. Gazette)
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It's all about flingin' fruitcakes! Think Punkin' Chunkin', but with miniature catapults that kids build themselves lofting tiny fruitcakes (and marshmallows) through the air. We're partnering once again with
Imagination Celebration and gearing up for our
3rd Annual Kid's Mini Fruitcake Toss at iSpace in the Citadel mall on Saturday, January 23rd, 10am - 2pm.
[You can also catch us on the Fox21 Morning News
between 8-9 am next Monday (Dec. 21st) to find out more and see a couple of the little catapults in action.]
Just as last year, we'll kick it off with a mini catapult building workshop at 10am (for kids ~ K-6th grades). All materials- and ammo- will be provided for free, and
our volunteers will be available to help kids with the construction. At noon the competitions begin, with prizes for flinging mini-fruitcakes and marshmallows the greatest distance, hitting our castle, and
even for the best decorated catapults. We'll also offer an open division for any catapult engineers K-8th who choose to build their own mini fruitcake flinger (or modify our design) at home or school [all mini catapults must fit inside a 1' x 1' x 1' box, check our
website for any additional rules].
You can
preregister online (strongly advised) or just show up the day of the event. You can also drop in for a free pre-event mini catapult building workshop on Saturday, January 16th (also at iSpace), then customize your creation at home before the big toss! Check our website
events calendar for more details about any additional workshops we may add.
Mini Catapult Engineering Workshops at Your School
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by Mark Reis (C.S. Gazette)
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Cool Science also offers these fun and educational catapult engineering workshops to schools, scout meetings, home-school groups and libraries. Kids will build their own mini catapult then learn to modify and improve its performance (and practice with marshmallows, of course!). Older students may conduct experiments to measure distance when parameters such as launch angle are varied, then graph their data to predict performance. If you would like to request a workshop for your school, library or other group, just email
[email protected] .
Hurry if you want to schedule one before the Kid's Mini Fruitcake Toss on January 23rd!
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Try Some Cool Science at Home
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 One of the most amazing and crowd-pleasing demonstrations in our vast Cool Science repertoire is when we instantly freeze a bottle of super-cooled water (a key component of our very popular "States of Matter" show*). The video below- which you can also watch anytime on our
YouTube channel- shows just how quickly liquid water that has been cooled below its normal freezing temperature can change into a solid under very carefully prepared conditions.
What you may not realize is just how easy it is to reproduce this impressive demonstration yourself at home.
Our
"Instant Freeze Super-cooled Water" experiment page
shows you
step-by-step
the
most reliable method to
prepare super-cooled water, as well as the science of super-cooling and freezing point depression of solutions (t
he method used to cool the bottles, similar to the way ice cream is often made
at home). Several videos show water turning to ice almost instantly, freezing as it's poured into a dish and even making snowflakes inside the bottle. Give it a try- it's really Cool Science!
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| Toys That Teach Cool Science |
Continuing with our catapult theme, if your junior engineer has already mastered the basic fruitcake flinger featured in all of our workshops (which is based on the Roman "onager"), they may be ready to move up to a more complicated and efficient medieval siege weapon- the very cool trebuchet. Check out this
video to see one built for the PBS series Nova in action, then explore their
website where you can learn more about medieval warfare and even fire a virtual trebuchet online with their "
Destroy the Castle" game!
Remember those cartoons where a big guy jumps on one end of a teeter-totter or see-saw and shoots a much smalle
r fellow sitting on the other end high into the air? A trebuchet works m
uch the same way, except instead of dropping a bi
g guy, a very heavy counterweight is attached to one end of a long b
eam, with the pivot point located much closer to this end. This creates a simple machine called a lever, which is normally employed to lift heavy objects by using mechanical advantage, i.e. requiring less force than lifting the weight directly. While this does in fact make it much easier to raise the counterweight and "load" the trebuchet, the real advantage for our weapon is that when the counterweight drops, the longer end of the lever moves much faster than the falling weight on the shorter end. We could simply place a basket loaded with ammo at the end of the long arm, but most trebuchets add another little trick to get even more firing velocity by attaching a rope and a sling which holds the ammo instead. The long arm pulls the rope and when the arm stops the sling continues to swing up around the end at an even greater velocity (creating a double pendulum action), eventually releasing the ammo at this higher speed and from a higher launch point as well. If your trebuchet is working properly, all of this combines to shoot your payload not only much farther, but in a beautiful high arcing trajectory- great for getting over those tall castle walls!
 There are lots of plans on the internet to help you engineer and build a full-size trebuchet, but the best way for a younger student to begin is to construct one of many smaller kits available online. At left is a nice inexpensive solid wood Trebuchet kit you can buy from MakerShed, part of Make website which also has lots of other great projects for students interested in engineering. Adjusting and operating a trebuchet can also be very frustrating, so you may want to search for some good resources on the internet. This web page from Real World Physics Problems has a nice description of how the trebuchet works and tips for optimization, as well as an introduction to the rather complicated mathematical analysis (when you're ready). Good luck, and maybe we'll see your trebuchet at our next Kid's Mini Fruitcake Toss (we'll have one or two of ours there to show off).
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Parents and teachers: Cool Science can bring our
hands-on science programs to your school, library, scout troop, home-school group or special event, including increasingly popular Science Nights and after-school STEM Clubs. Choose from several interesting topics, and financial assistance is always available (we've never turned away any school because they couldn't pay us!)
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Call 719-389-6431 or email [email protected]
for more information,
Cool Science is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
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