2008-2009 Home School Program comes to a close

May 12th was the final day of our 2008-2009 home school program. This program began 4 years ago. It all started when 2 home school parents inquired about making the Exploreum part of their student’s science education experience. We began by simply doing demonstrations and short lectures for the students. Now, each month, 5 different home school groups come for a special class session. Though our initial focus was on 6th -12th grade, this past year we added a 1st – 5th grade curriculum as well.
Our 6th – 12th graders have: learned about electronics using solderless prototyping breadboards, build working amplifiers, collected and analyzed data by hand and using electronic data collection equipment, measured the speed of sound, analyzed the components of sound (period, frequency, amplitude, and wavelength) and made laser sound viewers.

This has been a great program and we are thrilled to be a part of science education for everyone.

2009 ASMS Internship Presentations

The 2009 Alabama School of Math and Science internship program has officially come to a close. On Wednesday May 25th Meghan Ange and Tim Diestelkamp presented their work to an audience of ASMS students, staff and administration. Both students developed two demonstrations and two activities for our visitors to do. The theme for this year was energy conservation / going green. The activities and demonstrations produced by Tim and Meghan included biodiesel production, turning CO2 into baking soda, temperature inversion and pollution, environmentally friendly solvents, CO2 as a greenhouse gas, oil spill cleanup, water testing for metals and quantity of coal burned to run household appliances. Their activities will become a part of the Exploreum’s regular rotation of interactive, enlightening and exciting educational materials.

Exploreum celebrates Earth Day this weekend, Saturday, April 25 - see us at the Summer Fun Expo at the Eastern Shore Center and at Earth Day Mobile Bay at Pier Park in Fairhope, Alabama.

Virtual Surgery Center is a big hit

The new Debakey Virtual Surgery Center located within the My BodyWorks health gallery is a big hit! The center includes the opportunity to conduct your own virtual surgery - you choose open heart surgery or knee surgery. You get to use the scalpel to cut open the skin, the saw to cut bone and the retractor to access the heart. The patients vital signs are displayed on the screen as you attempt to complete the surgery successfully and keep your patient alive and healthy. The surgery center also includes many other opportunities - seal blook vessels with laser beam accuracy, challenge your hand-eye coordination with exhibits that mimic endoscopic surgery techniques and learn about careers in health care.

My BodyWorks Exhibit Now Open

The new exhibit, My BodyWorks, is now open. A high-tech adventure in health, the gallery uses technology to edutain about the miracle of the human body. The gallery includes hands-on interactive exhibits such as virtual surgery, augmented reality heart, I-viewer and many others.

My BodyWorks exhibit in progress

The new exhibit gallery My BodyWorks is currently being constructed at the Exploreum Science Center. The new gallery will include more than 50 interactive exhibits that highlight human health. The Exploreum has partnered with more than 11 contractors in six states to complete this exhibit. Thank you to Infirmary Health System for making this gallery a reality! We are franctically working to make this exhibit the best in America and to bring it to the people of the Gulf Coast. Check out the photos to see our progress....

Slow-Mo video Explosion

The other day we took some time out of our hard work to further investigate one of our demonstrations. One of our current chemistry demonstrations is an acetylene explosion. We decided to use our high speed camera to investigate what really happens when the reaction occurs. This video is the result. It was filmed at 600 frames per second. A normal video is filmed around 32 frames per second. The high speed allows us to slow down the action.