Middle School

Our booth will be an interactive installation. A "work" area in the first tent will teach the public about how fossil fuels are speeding up the natural cycle of global warming. Public will create a paper model molecule of CO2 from a orange tissue paper with a dinosaur print. This will be brought into the second tent, where they add it to our atmosphere model. The second tent will have canvas added to the corners to create a circular chamber (rather than square). The walls will be covered with our studies of natural migrations & cycles.

An interactive display that will have examples of wing construction, design and evolution. Small interactive displays that will teach how a wing makes lift, why all the different designs, why the first designs didn't work, aviation/aircraft today and aviation career paths. These stations will be complimented by volunteers giving kids a chance to build an easy model to take with them or participate in a paper airplane "length of flight contest" with a small prize for each heats winner!

Ferring is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development of innovative treatments in the areas of reproductive health, urology, gastroenterology, endocrinology and orthopaedics; as well as a world leader in peptide and protein therapeutics. For EXPO Day 2016 FRI will have participants make a beaded keychain featuring the amino acid sequence of the peptide hormone Vasopressin.

In this booth, we will demonstrate how to make "video game controllers" out of cardboard, foil, glue, makey makey (makeymakey.com) devices, and a laptop. Students will go through 2 different stations: controller design and testing. The design station will be cutting out and decorating a cardboard controller. The testing station will be hooking up the controller to a makey makey and using it to play 1 level of Guitar Hero, Super Mario Bros, or game on Scratch (scratch.mit.edu) on our laptops.

The booth will incorporate several different hands-on activities (yet to be determined, but we have ideas flowing!) that incorporate engineering. Testing is in our nature and we are eager to share this with our community. When do things break? Why does a glass break at a different frequency than a brick? Why does ice melt at a different temperature than plastic? These are the kinds of questions we love to explore and find ways to improve performance of products and packaging.