Day 4
Wednesday 18 June 2014

On Wednesday the campers started out with a limited-budget challenge: design and fabricate a planetary lander, one that can safely land an egg dropped from the top of the Physical Sciences Building (the drop will take place on another day).  We learned that the Physical Sciences Building is approximately 50 feet tall, by using just a stopwatch, a (dropped) watermelon, and a theoretical physics calculation.  We also spent the morning skyping with with Dr. Harris, the former astronaut who heads the Harris Foundation.  He spoke to our campers about his experience in space in addition to encouraging them to follow their dreams.  After lunch the campers extracted DNA from samples taken from their cheeks, and then did an activity related to designing interstellar spaceships.  The evening was capped off with selecting a star from a professional astronomical database, one that they will study in detail at our big telescopes on Thursday and Saturday nights.