This past Saturday (October 1) was the third annual Science Day at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Several booths were set up around the zoo featuring hands on activities ranging across many areas of science from zoo staff, volunteers, and community partners. From 10 am - 3 pm, kids, parents, and teachers were being amazed by the physics shows, learning about many different kinds of animals, birds, and reptiles (some of which even came out to greet the public), and much more including an astronomy booth from LCOGT.
The overcast weather that we had been experiencing in Santa Barbara lately cleared beautifully for the day as Rachel Ross, Brian Haworth, Gary White, Melissa Graham, and Jessica Barton set up the booth. Activities this year included Seeing Through Alien Eyes (adapted from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and uses filtered glasses to see how our eyes see color if we were from a planet with a different type sun, as well as showing why astronomers use filters in their observations), cardboard tube telescopes (from Hands-On-Optics) and cardboard spectrographs (from the Standford Solar Center), the ever-popular infrared camera (complete with ice for drawing on faces and black garbage bag "space dust" and personal photo printouts), and a telescope set up to observe sunspots.
As this event was geared towards science teachers and classrooms, most of the activities from the different booths were aimed at specific levels or standards and shown how they can be adopted and modified for other levels.
All the participants were enthusiastic and the activities well received. The day was nonstop excitement for everyone involved. Many thanks to the Santa Barbara Zoo for hosting Science Day and hope to be back next year!
