Several questions from a class we visited.

What is it like working in your museum?

          The Bradbury Science Museum is a very fun place to work. There are interesting people to work with, and we spend a lot of our time teaching each other interesting things.  The museum is full of fascinating objects and information, and visitors come here from all over the world. The museum is part of one of the top science laboratories in the world, and we get to hear about amazing things the scientists are doing here.

          We teachers do research, schedule visits, give presentations, and plan future activities and projects. Sometimes we have to catch up on our paperwork. We stay pretty busy. Several times each week, when we are lucky, we even get to go out of the museum in the Science On Wheels van to visit students in their classrooms as we did at your school!

Do you enjoy working with science activities with kids?

          There are two of us who are "museum educators." We started out as teachers, and we love working with kids. We also all agree that science is not only very important to learn about, but that it is really cool stuff. We try hard to make our programs as fun and as interesting as we can, and it is all for you students. The big payoff in a job like this is when we get to actually see kids learning from and enjoying what we do.

After a demonstration comparing falling paper and falling books during which we placed the paper on top of the book.

I just got your question asking what would happen if the paper was not entirely on top of the book when we dropped them.

This is a great question, and I am happy to say that I don't know.

Now that you have identified the problem, I suggest you design some experiments, write some hypotheses, follow your procedures, record your observations, and report your results. I would like to see what you discover.

Other questions: Does it matter how big the book is compared to the paper? Does it matter how heavy the book is? Would it work with tissue paper? What happens if you use cardboard in place of either the paper or the book, or both? Would it work if you crumpled up the paper? I don't remember if we tried putting the paper below the book in your class. What if you hold the paper a little bit above the book when you drop them?

One of the best things about science is that the more we find out, the more there is to wonder about.

Please share a list of Circuit Connection Program Materials.

First circuit: The switch, lamp socket, and six-volt lantern battery are all conventional hardware. The bulb is a special 50 watt 12 volt light bulb intended for use in RVs boats, or houses that use solar or wind electricity off the grid. Ask about it at a hardware store.

Block-o-trons: The model electrons we pass around a circle. We made these blocks on a table saw, but any similar objects would serve the purpose.

Snap Circuits: This kit, by Elenco, is available in some stores in Santa Fe and can be found on the Internet, try http://amazon.com or http://thetoyhunt.com. The Toy Hunt website has a plethora of add-on kits. For the very best price one should Google “Snap circuits.”

Balloon Fuses: We use high quality balloons. Thinner balloons will pop easily on contact with the steel wool. The steel wool is the coarsest grade we found in a hardware store. Be careful, it has sharp edges, and it is easy to cut one's fingers pulling it out of the bag. Cut it with snips or scissors. The aluminum foil wires are simple strips of aluminum foil rolled and flattened into wires. Masking tape binds the ends of the strips over the ends of the steel wool to the balloons. Connecting batteries will heat the wire sufficiently to pop the balloon if the steel wool is about half a centimeter or less long between the ends of the foil strips. Two “D” cells works faster than one, but one will do the trick, too.

Conductor or insulator?: The electronic parts of this are mostly available from Radio Shack. We use battery holders, alligator clip leads, light bulbs and light bulb holders. A more complete source is http://allelectronics.com on the Internet, or Google the items you are looking for. Science supply companies, like NASCO, have these items as well. The sample conductors and insulators can be a collection of any sort of thing from around the house or around school. Nails, aluminum foil, plastic items, wooden things, marbles, jewelry, etc. all are interesting to test.

Where do we get information for our scientific explanations at the Bradbury Science Museum?

A lot of our information, especially about our exhibits, comes from scientists working in the fields of those exhibits. At Los Alamos National Laboratory, we have lots of scientists working on many different kinds of projects. Some of the information comes from research we do on a particular subject. We have people who take that information and try to make it understandable for our typical visitors. We also have a very talented exhibit designer, and a terrific exhibit builder to make the displays attractive.

The educators teach lessons that we have researched, and some of the information comes from classes we had in our elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as college. We all went to college. We have also had many interesting conversations with scientists. We read science publications, journals, and magazines, as well as articles in the newspaper. We do a lot of research in books and on the Internet.

Speaking for myself, I love reading books. My favorite books are non-fiction, books about things that are real. I am never very far from a book, and right now I am reading three at the same time! (I don't recommend reading more than one at a time, but this is just the way I am.) Many of the facts that I like to share come from books I have read, many of them long before I had any idea that some day I would be using that information to teach to students.