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Thousands experience silly side of science at OH WOW!
By Bob Jackson
YOUNGSTOWN
The streets echoed the sounds of science, as thousands of people turned out for Silly Science Sunday at the OH WOW! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Center for Science & Technology downtown.
It was the seventh year of the event, which this year was in conjunction with the McD’s Sock Run, said Suzanne Barbati, OH WOW! president and executive director. The sock run kicked off the day, after which Silly Science Sunday opened up.
“There are so many things for people to do here,” said Barbati. “We are filled with exhibitors, both inside our museum and outside on the streets.”
Besides the center’s normal displays and activities inside, there were 30 exhibitors and displays set up along Federal and Market streets, outside the museum’s doors.
One of the more popular stops was the “walk on water” activity, where children literally could walk across a tank of water. More than 500 pounds of cornstarch had been mixed into the water, creating a gooey mess at the bottom, but allowing children to walk across the surface of the water ... as long as they kept moving.
If they stopped, they immediately sank, and getting across got more difficult as their feet became mired in the cornstarch muck.
“It felt like somebody was grabbing my leg,” said 7-year-old Alexander Krok of Boardman, after he slogged across the tank, which was only about knee-deep. “It was like the slime was grabbing me and pulling me down when I tried to walk.”
Alexander’s father, Scott, said Alexander was looking forward to the water-walking activity more than anything else.
“All week long he was saying, ‘I can’t wait to get down there and run on the cornstarch,’” Scott said, noting that Alexander’s interest in science includes cooking at home.
“He makes his own pasta,” Scott said. “He mixes all the ingredients and runs it though the hand-crank machine. I boil the water for him, but he does everything else.”
Barbati said the first year they had the walk-on-water activity, it was set up right outside the OH WOW! doors, which led to lots of sticky cornstarch being brought into the museum.
“We were cleaning up cornstarch for weeks,” she said.
Another popular exhibitor was the Solar Sisters, operated by Mary Buchenic and Jennifer Gasser. The nonprofit group teaches people how to use solar energy for cooking.
“You’re just using concentrated sunlight directed into a cooking space and retaining the heat once it’s generated,” Buchenic said.
Children were being taught how to use a Copenhagen panel solar cooker, which they were able to take home with them.
Similar devices are used in places such as Kenya, Haiti and Pakistan, and can even be used to boil and purify water when needed, Buchenic said.
More information about the Solar Sisters is available at their website, GDSnonprofit.org, or by emailing them at wearethesolarsisters@gmail.com.
Sunday’s event also included a record-breaking beach ball drop, when 2,100 inflated beach balls were simultaneously dropped from the second floor of the OH WOW!
Barbati said the group set a record last year when 1,500 beach balls were dropped, but it was not officially recognized as a world record because the center did not pay the $10,000 fee to be evaluated and approved by Guinness World Records.
“It might not be official, but we did set a record last year, and we broke it this year,” she said.
The beach balls were donated by First National Bank and by Youngstown State University’s College of Science, Technology, Math and Engineering. The YSU STEM students spent the past week or so inflating all the balls, Barbati said.
Silly Science Sunday was the kickoff of Seven Days of STEM, the Youngstown Regional Science and Technology Festival, which will include activities all week in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.