3rd Annual Cape Cod Celebrates National Chemistry Week at Wicked Cool Autumn Welcome Science Cafe

The Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society celebrated National Chemistry Week 2015 in the Boston area at the Museum of Science and the Boston Children’s Museum and in classrooms and at the Boy Scouts on Cape Cod. Volunteers at NESACS Boston events boasted rainbow colored tye-dye shirts by suggestion of the NESACS NCW Coordinator’s 11 year old daughter, Cassie Lopes, and featured numerous color experiments that were accompanied by the acapella group, University of Wisconsin-Madison Early Music Singers, who sang Seventeenth Century songs about chemistry while Cambridge Science Festival’s Science on the Street stole the show at the Cape Cod Science Café for Scouts with their color-maze following Ozobots and Augmented Reality Sandbox which uses colors to show the changes in elevation in real-time as kids play in the sandbox.  See the C&EN blurb here
Learn more here: http://www.nesacs.org/section_act_ncw.html

CAPE COD CELEBRATES NATIONAL CHEMISTRY WEEK AT WICKED COOL AUTUMN FESTIVAL

NESACS Event with the Boy Scouts ACS NCW 2015 Boy Scout’s Autumn Festival-Cape Cod Science Café 2015 By Jack Driscoll and Jennifer Maclachlan, NESACS, Cape Cod Science Café and STEM Journey Committee On Oct. 25, 2015 (1-5 PM), a NESACS Cape Cod Science Café was held at Camp Greenough, Yarnouth, MA in conjunction with the Wicked Cool Autumn Festival of the Cape and Islands Council of the Boy Scouts of America (C&ICBSA). There were more than 700 in attendence The event consisted of hay rides, pumpkin carving, building, bat houses, fishing on Lake Greenough, archery, a visit with a blacksmith, creating cider with an antique cider press, experiencing STEM and Scouting. NESACS has worked with the Cape & Islands BSA to integrate STEM into Boy Scout activities. We decided to promote this event as part of the ACS National Chemistry Week (NCW) and opened the event to the public so that the people of Cape Cod can experience the NCW. The theme of the ACS NCW this year was Chemistry Colors our World as shown below http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/outreach/ncw.html . 

USE OF THE NCW YEARLY THEME: CHEMISTRY COLORS OUR WORLD

By golly, we 'made' Cape Cod! 

We selected a number of experiments that produce color to match this year’s theme. Peg LaGendre, Cambridge Science Festival's Science on the Street, brought an augmented reality sandbox which changed colors. Children loved to play in this sandbox. They could convert a mountain into a lake or ocean by moving the sand! 

Patrick Gordon of NESACS used the Briggs-Rauscher Oscillating Color Reaction that changes color back and forth from yellow to deep blue as it is stirred. See the short video below right hand -side.

Nancy Gifford of the Harwich Public Schools used the lipids in regular milk and food coloring to show a continuous mixing of color. They even made a mixture that looked like Cape Cod. The kids had fun adding the food coloring and trying to make pictures. Children made colored silly putty with corn starch. Margaret Cole was a big hit with Abby Maclachlan who played with her colored corn starch for two weeks. Paul Reibach, Smithers Pharma, and Scout Leader presented Adventures in Chromatography using the scientific method. Craig Christianson, Engineering Professor and Scout Leader, presented a display on energy generation with wind, solar, and hand-powered LED lights and a solar cell propelled Viking ship. A gift card encouraged many of the children to enter the illustrated poem contest. They loved the Chemistry Ambassador sashes.  Saturday October 24, 2015 Cape Cod Celebrated National Chemistry Week at the Cape and Islands Council of the Boy Scouts of America at BSA Camp Greenough in Yarmouthport, MA (Cape Cod). 

In 2013, the Cape Cod Science Cafe, an effort supported and organized
by Jennifer Maclachlan and Jack Driscoll,  who both represent the Northeastern Local Section of the American Chemical Society Public Relations Committee and PID Analyzers, LLC, as part of our local K-12 outreach partnering efforts, began a relationship with the Cape and Islands Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which has led to five successful events and lasting collaborations; we're planning our sixth collaborative event for April 2, 2016.