USA Science and Engineering Festival 2014

Getting rid of that wisdom tooth sure set me back! But finally, here is my summary of the 2014 USA Science and Engineering Festival on April 27^th in Washington, DC. 

The festival runs on both days of the weekend, the 26^th and 27^th, but we only attend on again Sunday this year. (We attended the festival in 2012 and you can read my summary here.) This year the festival was bigger, fuller, and even more exciting. The previous week a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Conference was held at the convention center. So much science!  

I was incredibly excited that the festival ran from 9 to 6 for both weekend days this year. So much more time to try and fit everything in. Which was of course impossible. It was like Disney World with out the rides. Well, kind of. :)

One big change from the previous festival was the amount of space the festival occupied. This year not only did they have booths and stages in all three big halls, but two additional halls upstairs. 

Less then a 1/4 of the ENTIRE festival.

Stay tuned after the break for more photos and a video!

We Boarded the MAGIC SCHOOL BUS!

As soon as we arrived we dove right into the science. With so many hands on activities we stopped at almost every booth. 

Touching a squid beak.

Searching through sand. He found a shark tooth!

How many washers can your paper bridge hold?

 He really enjoyed looking through the microscope and searching the sand. If anyone found anything, the scientists placed it in a bag with the finders name and contact information. After they analyzed the findings, if they were published, the finder would be mentioned in the publication. Maybe C's shark tooth will lead to something amazing!

Dragon's Breath

We also built a car from straws, tape, and lifesaver mints, built paper airplanes and flew them in a wind tunnel, learned about food safety, and played with circuits and robots. The robots were a big draw! Luckily there were plenty of them to tryout all over the festival. C really enjoyed playing with the circuits and solar panels too. It just seemed to fascinate him! 

mmm… Cajun Crickets

Oh, and I ate a few crickets. 
Not bad actually. They really have no taste, just a bit of a crunch. 

Megan McDonald reads from Stink Solar System Superhero

This one isn't too blurry. :)

Days before, I went through all the presentations and shows online to decided which ones I wanted to attend. Unfortunately, I missed a few I had hoped to catch, including hearing about Jon Scieszka’s new book Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor, but there was just to much to see! We listened to Andrea Beaty read Rosie Revere, Engineer and caught the end of Megan McDonald and Natalie Pope Boyce’s talk on blending Fiction and Non-Fiction. The book fair section was well arranged and meeting authors at their signing booths was simple and easy. We picked up our very first Stink book! Both Andrea Beaty and Megan McDonald were fantastic and easy to talk to. My small-budding photographer enjoyed talking to both authors and insisted on taking pictures, not being in them. As a result, our pictures were rather blurry. :)

The two pictures above are on a banner that will be going to space! 

It is impossible to sum up the entire event. So here’s a short video of a few of the wonderful things we saw through out the day. 

We can’t wait until the next Science and Engineering Festival. It looks like it won't be until 2016. Hopefully they will move to a yearly schedule soon!

As Herby the Dowbot said, "what’s your science?"