Science & Nature Conference at Gustavus...

Lukie and Lex wanted to go to the Science and Nature Conference at Gustavus again this year.  This was the third year for Lukie and second for Lex.  We took off this morning and headed for Saint Peter...

Being in 5th grade, Lukie could sign up for four sessions, he went with:

1.  Super-Structures
2.  The night sky from your backyard
3.  Macro Invertebrates
4.  Phun Physics

Lex could sign up for three sessions (all 3rd and 4th grade students had a morning session called Phun Science).  She went with:

1.  Honey bees and you
2.  Seven bears Oh My!
3.  Mysteries of the MN River Valley

I was able to catch three of the sessions each went to (there's a lot of back and forth making sure they get to where they need to go)...

In Super-Structures, kids were placed in groups and given a task of either building a bridge (greater than the smallest wingspan of a group member) or a tower (taller than the shortest group member).  But first, they learned how to build strong squares...

Lukie's group decided to build a tower (and it needed to hold 5 pounds of weight), he was the shortest member of the group by an inch or two...

And they made good progress...

This is the point I had to leave (to catch Lex's last 20 minutes of her morning meeting), but Lukie said they built a tower taller than all the members of the group and it held 8 pounds...

After the end of the morning session, Lex and I went to her first short course about honeybees...of course she sat in the front row...and of course, her hand was in the air for every question...

Though she's seen them, she liked watching the live bees near the end of the session the best...

After lunch, Lex went with a friend of Luke's to her next session, while Lukie and I went across campus to learn about Macro Invertebrates...

At the end, they searched for some...we both saw (but couldn't catch) a leech...

From there, Lukie and I went to Phun Physics were they learned about Potential and Kinetic Energy through the classic bowling ball on a string, of course the student leaned into the oncoming ball and took one to the face...

They also talked a lot about waves, like light waves, how white light is divided into colors.  They had a ball lite up in white light, but when they twirled it around in the dark, you could see the different colors that comprise the white light...

I left shortly after that demonstration to head to Lex's last session to find her holding a bison femur bone (she was convinced it was a mammoth bone, but was wrong).  They were learning how different fossils have been found in and near the MN River Valley...

By the time Lex's last session was over, Lukie was waiting at the door to head back...he has basketball camp all week and was worried he'd be late (he wasn't)...but it was a good day...