2010 4-H National Youth Science Day

Two Rock 4-H held its 2010 National Youth Science Day event in Walnut Park, Petaluma CA on October 2. Many thanks to all the Two Rock 4-H kids and parents who helped to make this event a rousing success. We had three activities for the public to participate in: The CO2 "Turtlebot", CO2 experiments and a demonstration of solar and wind energy projects.



Our CO2 Turtlebot worked great and kids had a great time trying to maximize their CO2 output by holding their breath then signing the results as drawn by the Lego NXT robot.
Special thanks to Brian Davis of the NXT Step for his support in helping us build and program our Lego robot. Using the power of the Internet for collaboration, we conserved resources in this project. and many thanks to John Melville at Vernier Software & Technology who provided us guidance on how to connect their CO2 sensor to our robot.

We had many kids try the 4-H2O experiment and kids really got the concept of the effects of CO2 in water and the air. Some kids found that increasing the amount of CO2 in the plastic bags led to "explosive results", much to the amazement of onlookers.

We also had a chance to test some of our solar model cars as part of our 2010-11 4-H project activities. Some cars worked better than others, with the overall winner being the easy to build "Solar Grasshopper". This was the first time Two Rock 4-H had done a science event like this and I am very pleased for all the support and encouragement we had from our club and the community.