Liv's a Scientist

I know it's been a while since I last posted something, but midterms and papers kept me pretty busy these past couple weeks.

Anyway, this past weekend, we took Livie to a science fair at the University of Iowa's research park. Liv had a blast! She had fun, even though it was raining! At one point, she even said, "I want to be a scientist when I grow up!"

The science fair had a ton of hands-on activities for kids in K-12. She got to gather data, record data, see some microscopic medical photos (what germs look like magnified hundreds of times, what the heart looks like, seeing a plastic skeletal replica of the foot's bones, and other stuff like this), as well as learning some physics basics with blocks and marbles going down little ramps.

Just before I took this first photo, she had picked out a "little parachute guy" (one of those plastic "army" guys with a parachute attached to it). One scientist stood on a step-stool and dropped it, while another one timed its descent with a stop watch. Then, Livie got to help measure how far away it had landed from its intended target.

 After having the time/distance data recorded in the computer, she got to put her yellow dot on the chart. 

She was excited that this kind of "fun stuff" was actually science! I told her that there are so many kinds of science that are just as fun as this! Even looking at the moon and other planets through a telescope is science! She was very impressed with that bit of information.

She even got to make a bracelet based on a butterfly's DNA, which she made out of two strands of color-coded beads.

All in all, it was a fun way of getting her interested and excited about science.