Thursday, March 24, 2011

San Diego Science Festival Expo Day / Saturday March 26

This Saturday, March 26, is the San Diego Science Festival EXPO DAY at PETCO Park.


A special feature of the EXPO is the “Ask me, I’m a Scientist or Engineer” Booth where Scientists and engineers are needed to sit and talk with the kids, answering their questions and engaging them in the possibilities of science.  For a complete listing of events, visit www.sdsciencefestival.com/festival-programs.html.

The Jacobs School of Engineering will have a big presence at the San Diego Science Festival Expo Day. Jacobs School contributors include:


We plan to display a number of different body systems (i.e the lungs, heart, brain, etc) made by elementary school students. We intend to inform others of the complexity of the human body; it is the piecing of small individual parts that create a functioning whole which is analogous to and symbolically represents many aspects in life that require that type of cooperation.

We will be doing a cryptography demonstration in which students can solve a substitution cipher (every letter is replaced with some other letter). We will have one version that's done on a large whiteboard. We also have made a computerized version that attendees can visit afterwards if they enjoyed solving it. This is a really interactive activity.

IEEE UCSD
A group of UCSD students will have multiple demos on how an analog circuit works and we'll take our theremin (an early electronic musical instrument controlled without contact from the player.). We'll also take some of the projects that UCSD IEEE students work on, such our robots and remote control cars.

UCSD Department of Bioengineering
Our exhibit, titled Defying Gravity: Blood Flow from Head to Toe, explores the human circulatory system from both a physiological and engineering perspective with activities for all ages. Kids can complete a paper craft to make their very own heart valve which only allows air to pass in one direction, demonstrating how valves in our heart and veins control unidirectional blood flow.

The UCSD Jacobs Graduate Student Council is a graduate student organization comprised of: electrical engineering, bioengineering, mechanical, structural and computer science. We will be presenting a series of exciting science experiments including: strawberry DNA extraction, snap circuits, hair gel polymer demonstrations, gummy structures and more!

The UCSD Near Space Balloon team is active in the San Diego community to inspire high school kids to get interested in math science and engineering. UCSD undergrad and grad students work with local high school teachers and students to launch their science payloads on balloons to near space (85,000 feet) and then recover them.