Roasting marshmallows with telescopes...

Hi!

How's this for a 24-hour activity? Making telescopes. At night, use your telescope to stare into the black, huge, starry sky. Even look at the Moon's craters. Then, during the day, use your telescope to roast marshmallows!

But let's be even crazier. Joining us on Sunday Night, August 7th is Mr. Robert Rosenberg, the President of the Amateur Astronmer Association of New York. He will bring telescopes. And he will give us a guided tour of heaven.  Now that's crazy. 

- Yossi

Science = Explosions.

Hello!

Every day is July 4th.  "Diet Coke and Mentos" Fireworks!  Who's in? 

Of course, the best scientists make the biggest explosions. Is Diet Coke and Mentos really the baddest match? Grab your notebooks and rulers, because we will find the most powerful, explosive combination of Soda and Candy out there.

Just one month to camp!

Yossi

PondZoo Scheme

Hi, I'm David! I study chemistry at Yeshiva University, and when I heard about the Simcha Lab I jumped at the opportunity. I've already spent a summer as an archery and paintball specialist at Simcha, but now I get to spend my time there teaching the kids about science and showing them how much fun it can be. Hopefully, they'll still let me use the paintball guns, though.

I'm excited about the biology experiments we're planning for our students. We're talking about nature walks to collect insect samples and pond water followed by examination under the fascinating Miscope - an easy-to-use digital microscope capable of 140x magnification. I can't wait to show the students (and see for myself) the invisible menagerie living right under our noses (so to speak)!

We're working hard to finalize the plan for the summer and hammer out a budget. We're almost set to go. Camp is gonna be awesome!

Time to Think SimchaSynthBio

Hello, all. It's Jake, another of the student scientists who couldn't resist a chance to have as much fun with science as I could imagine. Our little science workshop at Camp Simcha Special (whatever it's wacky name will be) is going to be a hotbed of sciencey fun, with sneaky undercurrents of actual learning, too!

Although it sounds advanced, I'm intent on pushing the limits of our science exploration past simple chemistry, physics, and biology. Let's run a synthetic biology experiment at Camp Simcha Special! "Synthetic biology?," you groan, "but that's booooring!" To you, I say, "nay".

iGEM, an annual international competition in genetic engineering (a field that is under the umbrella of synthetic biology) has shown, over the past few years, amazingly fun and simple things that new scientists can do with the technologies of synthetic biology. Bacteria that glow in several different colors? We can do that. Bacteria that smell deliciously minty? We can do that, too. Don't like mint? We've even got banana-scented bacterias. How do you like them bananas?

Our lab will be the real deal - we'll need gloves and goggles, lab coats and beakers, petri dishes and inoculating loops - but we'll be doing real science. And our results will glow in the dark.

Go crazy!

Helloo!

A word about planning. We want six colorful one hour-long projects and several activities to fill our waking hours with science, science and science. Getting lots and lots of ideas now is fantastic. Soon we’ll combine them and chisel them to create exciting, creative thematic projects and activities. That’s where color and theater and wacky names come in. Maybe a nature theme (with a more ridiculous name, of course) and a machine theme...hmm...

Also, we need a name for the science workshop! Any ideas?

- Yossi

Three. Two. One. Blast off!!!

Hello!

Professor Yossi here. Well, we've had some cool ideas so far. Hard thinkers might enjoy math riddles and chess challenges. Then there are electronic and mechanical ideas like building robots, laser tag equipment, energy balls that light up when a ring of people creates a circuit, electric motors, circuits for megaphones or radios, a cannon that launches t-shirts and that mind control game where the intensity of your thinking will actually levitate a ping pong ball. Oh, and competitions of all sorts, e.g., bridge building, egg dropping and boats filled with pennies. Can’t forget about chemistry: Rockets with live video feed, silly putty, magic sand and crystals. And then there’s life itself. How cool would it be to time is so that caterpillars and tadpoles emerge over two weeks of camp?! We can also do cool genetics projects like extracting DNA from strawberries or folding proteins using long wire back-bones with amino acids magnets attached. But there’s life and there’s life in the wild. We can even go on nature walks equipped with butterfly nets, binoculars and miscopes. Can’t forget the telescope and roasted marshmallows night. Great ideas with lots of potential. Keep them coming!

- Yossi

Google Doc

For an example of the collaborate work we're doing to plan, see our Google Doc. Note that this is a snapshot of our doc and does not reflect all our latest thoughts and plans.