2008-2009 Home School Program comes to a close

May 12th was the final day of our 2008-2009 home school program. This program began 4 years ago. It all started when 2 home school parents inquired about making the Exploreum part of their student’s science education experience. We began by simply doing demonstrations and short lectures for the students. Now, each month, 5 different home school groups come for a special class session. Though our initial focus was on 6th -12th grade, this past year we added a 1st – 5th grade curriculum as well.
Our 6th – 12th graders have: learned about electronics using solderless prototyping breadboards, build working amplifiers, collected and analyzed data by hand and using electronic data collection equipment, measured the speed of sound, analyzed the components of sound (period, frequency, amplitude, and wavelength) and made laser sound viewers.

This has been a great program and we are thrilled to be a part of science education for everyone.

2009 ASMS Internship Presentations

The 2009 Alabama School of Math and Science internship program has officially come to a close. On Wednesday May 25th Meghan Ange and Tim Diestelkamp presented their work to an audience of ASMS students, staff and administration. Both students developed two demonstrations and two activities for our visitors to do. The theme for this year was energy conservation / going green. The activities and demonstrations produced by Tim and Meghan included biodiesel production, turning CO2 into baking soda, temperature inversion and pollution, environmentally friendly solvents, CO2 as a greenhouse gas, oil spill cleanup, water testing for metals and quantity of coal burned to run household appliances. Their activities will become a part of the Exploreum’s regular rotation of interactive, enlightening and exciting educational materials.