Science Night at Viejo Valley Elementary School in Santa Barbara was held on April 7. This was the first year that LCOGT was invited, after one of the organizing teachers came by our booth at Science Day at the Santa Barbara Zoo last year and was impressed with the activities we had. Especially, of course, the infrared camera.
Rachel Ross, Jessica Barton, Gary White, and Brian Haworth brought the IR camera and Seeing Through Alien Eyes (an activity from the ASP). The IR camera was extremely popular, with many students cramming into the camera's field of view and to watch themselves on a large monitor as they drew on their faces with ice cubes, made hand prints on basketballs, scuff-marks on the carpet, and looked through “Space Dust” (aka a black, opaque plastic bag covering the camera). While their photos were being printed for them to take home (with an educational description of why we use infrared observations in astronomy of course), they pretended to be from another solar system with their central star a different color than our own Sun. They did this by wearing special, filtered glasses and looking at several different colored felt stars on a black background and determining what color the stars were, or if they could even see them at all!
Unfortunately we didn't get to go around to other exhibits, except for poking our head in the next classroom over to catch a glimpse of the UCSB Physics Circus and a quick trip down the corridor to meet a friendly porcupine who very much enjoyed being scratched behind his ear.
Science Night was a success, and we thank Viejo Valley School very much for inviting us out for this fun event!
