Science in the Library

On Thursday, August 25th, while the rest of the library was closed early, kids and their parents were hanging out here in the children's Story Room learning about paleontology and center of gravity, and building their own dinosaurs! I showed a slide show about how scientists' concepts of dinosaurs has changed over the years, particularly when we think about how a dinosaur would have stood or walked. Based on scientists' knowledge of anatomy and the weight of dinosaur bones, they've come to the conclusion that most dinosaurs had tails that stuck straight out, and provided balance while holding their heads and upper bodies in a forward (not upright!) position. Curiosity Machine: Build a Balanced Dinosaur from AnnMarie Ppl Then we took a wide variety of materials, including toilet paper tubes, cardboard, tape, plastic straws, pipe cleaners, and a few colorful and fun materials like feathers and googly eyes, and made dinosaurs that stood at least 6" ta...

We've started up Curiosity Machine again! For yesterday's Curiosity Machine classes, we built suspension bridges! This is one of the civil engineering challenges on Curiositymachine.org . First we learned how spiders build their webs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qaaYlpVmJM This picture from p. 21 of Do All Spiders Spin Webs? by Melvin and Gilda Berger, Illustrated by Roberto Osti and published by Scholastic illustrates the process of a spider web very well: Then we learned about the basics of suspension bridge design, how the cables help a bridge to hold firm and strong and balance out all the forces acting on it in all directions. I showed the kids this page from the book Bridges! Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test by Carol A. Johmann and Elizabeth J. Rieth, published by Williamson Publishing: We learned about John Roebling, the great engineer behind the Brooklyn Bridge, and how he also strengthened the Niagra Bridge with more trusses and ...