A Weekend of Science (and Celebrities)

Look! I got *this* close to Mayim Bialik. Ok, maybe there were about 200 people between me and her, but I have a really good zoom on my camera. The crowd was HUGE. It was standing room only. I don’t think she expected to have such a big audience at a science and engineering festival. In fact, she likened the crowd to ComiCon.

Dr. Bialik spoke about how she decided to study science. The cool thing is that science was hard for her in college. She mentions that her humanities minor helped keep her GPA up. She has a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. I felt a bit old when she recalled her career in Blossom and how the show came on after Fresh Prince of Bel Air with a young Will Smith. (Feel old now?) She also has a new book out, Beyond the Sling where she shares her views on attachment parenting.

Speaking of authors, Sophia was thrilled to discover that Jenny Offill was speaking and signing her book 11 Science Experiments that Failed. We just picked up 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore from the library. It’s just as funny and clever as 11 Science Experiments that Failed. We also found out that Jenny Offill is working on a new book! She was great to meet in person and was great with all the kids in the room. (If you missed our review of the book, take a peek.)

We tried to check out another celebrity, Bill Nye the Science guy. We were not close to him at all. In fact, hubby and I put both kids on our shoulders so they could see him. It was late afternoon by then and I think we were all tired and hungry. It was fun to say that we say him live.

Jaxson had his own science fun too. The first booth we hit was the PBS Kids area. He saw the sign from across the convention hall. He’s constantly begging to play with my iPad, so he grabbed the VINCI II tablet from the Sid the Science Kid booth and started playing it.

Right before we called it quits, we found the University of Delaware’s booth. They programmed this Mater ride on toy for kids just like my little guy. All Jaxson had to do was push the big bright yellow button to accelerate and turn it to steer. I think he would have made a great getaway if the gal from the booth hadn’t followed him.

It was a busy day, but we had so much fun with so many different aspects of science. There was even a entire aisle devoted to science for girls! More on that soon.

Psst, if you want to see some maggot art, head over to my craft blog, Cup of Creativi-Tea.

What did you do this weekend?