Budding scientists take flight - 15 Dec 2012

The much awaited aerospace & science program by Sam Gibbs at RMAF Museum in Sungai Besi! Even an overcast sky, occasional drizzle and a clash of events at RMAF did not dampen our spirits. 

A lively and animated Sam Gibbs in action.....

How to make a water rocket fly high? Why does a spinning wheel balance itself and fall when you stop spinning? How do you make a cloud in a bottle? A common science question from adult is, "How can I explain such a hard concept in a simple enough way for my kid to understand?"

Sam helped kids think like scientists.

Find the fastest way for water to go down to the lower bottle. The trick is to shake the water in the top bottle a while until it forms a tornado spin. This is the most efficient way to use energy, ie in a spiralling motion or the scientific term, a vortex. 

Make your own shooting cannon. 

When you fill smoke inside a cylinder container, you could have your very own Vortex smoke ring cannon! So powerful it could knock down the cup placed on your head. We didn't realise that vortex formations were so common in the world, examples tornado, galaxy, hurricane, DNA, in certain plants, vegetables and fruits too.

How does the Bernoulli's principle work in water bottle rocket? You need some water (fuel), pump (thrust from water creates force in direction of rocket), air (opposite force to the direction of rocket) and the Newton law of gravity (force down). 

Now we could make our water rocket fly high into space! 3-2-1 Blast off. 

Can you spot the rocket in the overcast sky? Not high enough for the space, I guess. Space is just 100km above us actually, and it takes only 6 mins for a rocket to get into space and another 2 mins to get to the orbit. Amazing.

Giant bubbles were spelt FUN. Where did the colours come from? Today we learnt another new term, 'refraction'.  Bubbles could be used to split lights into the colours of rainbow.

Mixing the fundamental colours. Also demonstration on the effects of colour filters. Guess the most powerful light? The ultraviolet light - and the prolonged exposure to the UV light from the sun is very damaging especially for fair-skinned people.

A chance in the flight simulator demo, mission to avoid crashing into the KLCC twin towers. "We must ask our parents to download this in our tablets."

Cover your ears, boys and girls!! See whether we can make our hot-air balloon so big like "UP".

We love you Uncle Sam for making science make sense.

Last activity of the day - making paper groove tube to fly 

Friendship takes flight as well!