Cindy Ortiz of Downey jumps on a launchpad to send a rocket soaring straight in to the air at UCLA's Explore Your Universe open house for the community. Photos by Maggie Sharpe.
Launch watchers tip their heads back in unison to watch the ship soar straight into the air. As they follow the rocket's trajectory upward and back to Earth, its trail of fuel foaming behind it, everyone claps. Children gasp and cheer as the vessel they helped create just moments before completes its journey.
Such scenes of scientific wonder were common at UCLA’s fifth annual Explore Your Universe (EYU) event, held Nov. 17 and organized by Astronomy Live!, a graduate student run outreach program of the astronomy and physics department. More than 4,000 people swarmed the Court of Sciences and Kinsey Pavilion to participate in a scientific open house where children (and adults) could learn by observing and participating in dozens of live demos and experiments.
"Our goal for EYU is simply to get people excited about learning, whether it’s astronomy, geology, engineering, or any other field," said Shane Frewen, an Astronomy Live! coordinator and astronomy graduate student. "Most people — children, adults, even students — don’t have the opportunity to get hands on with science in a fun way, so we're excited to provide such a great opportunity to do that."
Frewen was one of about 160 graduate and undergraduate student volunteers who staffed the 33 tables, walked children through demonstrations and presented complex scientific phenomena in an accessible manner.
At the rocket booth, which drew a huge crowd, students used two-liter soda bottles as the bodies and cut cardstock to make the fins of the rockets that could shoot up to 50 feet in the air. This booth was a particular favorite of Monica Passchier from Santa Monica, who was enthralled by the rocket's mysteries.
"She just keeps going back to try to figure it out!" said her mother, "I think she may be a future Bruin."
One of the most popular events at Exploring Your Universe was the comet making booth, put on by Astronomy Live! UCLA students Katie Kaufman, William Chong and Kevin Zhang used dry ice, water, dirt and ammonia to make comets very similar to the ones found in space. The children clustered around them, watching in awe as the astronomical chefs gathered their ingredients, combined them and pulled comets cloaked in mist from their bucket.
Members of the chemistry fraternity Alpha Chi Sigma at UCLA were busy serving up liquid nitrogen ice cream to curious and hungry kids.
The mathematics department had several interactive activities for visitors to try out, including a game that demonstrated game theory. As long as the player who made the first move followed a set of rules, she would always win regardless of what moves the other player made.
Alan Mackey, a graduate student in the department of mathematics, showed children how to twist lengths of paper into shapes called Mobius strips. Mackey, who loved going to events like EYU as a kid, said that public science demonstrations were especially meaningful to him because it gives kids the opportunity to see amazing science in "something as simple as a strip of paper."
"It's good to have a campus event to bring together science departments and student groups to engage the community," said Gregory Mace, an astronomy Ph.D. student and co-founder of Astronomy Live! and Exploring Your Universe, who greeted attendees at the information and introduction booth.
Those who seemed to benefit the most from the event were the young children who fired off smoke cannons and touched tidal creatures like sea urchins. Children who attended got goodie bags and were able to color galaxies, make circuits out of Play-Doh and look in to the sky with telescopes.
Chloe Timmerman, 9, came from Orange Country with her mother and brother, Jason, to check out all that Exploring Your Universe had to offer. Her favorite part?
"I loved the marshmallow booth. They took all of the air out of the marshmallow and it shrunk up!"
