MAD SCIENCE CAMP (July 15-19)

MAD SCIENCE
Reactions in Action Camp

AGES: Grades 1-6 (ages 6-12)
DATE: July 15 - 19, 2019
TIME: 9am - 3pm (Parents may drop of their child as early as 8:45 am)
LOCATION: River Tree Arts

Shake up a flask of fun in the lab as a Junior Chemist! Try your hands as a real Mad Scientist in this whirlwind camp packed solid with cool reactions. Explore bubbling potions, slimy polymers, color changing liquids, dry ice bubbles, and solids that disappear in an instant! Start out the week learning about laboratory equipment at your personal lab tech bench. Then, slide down the PH scale and spend a day finding out how different chemicals react when mixed together.

Build and break molecules and grow crystals in a petri dish. Ooze into a gooey day of making crazy concoctions such as glow putty, glow spheres in a test tube, thermochromic mixtures, and guar gum brain goo! Round out this radical week by manipulating matter in all of its three states! Take home a full set of Mad Science lab gear that includes a graduated cylinder, a flask, test tubes, goggles, and a lab coat. Come take a walk on the wild side of chemistry!

DAILY SCHEDULE

DAY 1- SUPER COOL SCIENCE 

Heat up and then cool down at the atomic level with solids, liquids, and gases! Discover the fascinating properties of dry ice and watch awe inspiring chemical reactions in action with this frozen gas. Taste CO2, pop "smoking" bubbles, uncover the secret to monster movie fog, make your own brew using CO2, and use dry ice to create a colorful chemical reaction that changes color as it fizzes. Act out hot and cool molecule movements and then cool down as you learn about the concepts of heat and heat transfer. Melt a metal in hot water and even in your hand, bend bimetallic metal with a light bulb, use lasers to detect the temperature of your chemical reactions, and participate in various tactile temperature tests. Receive a Thermo-Color Cup, Bimetallic Jumping Disc, and heat sensitive paper that will allow you to cool down and heat up experiments at home.  

DAY 2 - CHEMISTRY CLUB

Join us as we take the mystery out of chemistry! Campers will be introduced to this exciting, vital science—its importance in our daily lives and its role behind the scenes in many everyday and not-so everyday phenomena! But first, campers will become lab scientists-in-training as they learn various laboratory techniques! Learn to manipulate an assortment of lab equipment in a series of safe, hands-on activities. Learn to transfer droplets using a pipette and mix larger quantities using a magnetic stirring rod. Learn to swirl an Erlenmeyer flask, witness and perform oscillating reactions, investigate wacky potions, and explore the chemical processes behind these phenomena’s. A series of interactive games will be played to make these concepts come alive. Campers will round out the day putting their skills to the test by uncovering the secret Mad Science Slime recipe and discovering how a rainbow can be created using Acids and Bases. In addition to making Mad Science slime, campers also take home a Graduated Gear kit. Children will be assigned their very own Lab Coat and Safety Goggles that they will get to take home at the end of the week.

DAY 3: REACTION TIME

Ready, set, reactions! Explore the fundamental “nuts and bolts” of chemistry, starting with the principle of  “chemically counting” using the chemists’ unit of measure, a mole. Learn how chemical elements help create chemical compounds and that matter is never created or destroyed. Cool molecular model building introduces chemical structure and bonding. Turn a lemon into a battery, make paper turn to colors of the rainbow by using an electrochemical process, write your name using an electrical current, and make a chemical clock in a cup. Experimenting with chemical bonds and conductive whirligigs are just a few ways we will push the limits of chemistry in this day. Put your new chemistry know-how to work as you make your own brain goo and get your own Erlenmeyer flask to create all kinds of chemical reactions at home.  

DAY 4: CHEMICAL COMBO 

Become a Mad Science chemist as you learn all about the chemical things that you encounter everyday in your house and school. Discover how chemical reactions are everywhere and how you can figure out if a chemical change has occurred right before your very eyes. Witness solutions in action, solids reduced to a puddle of goo, and see a mysterious chemical provide the chemical equivalent of an outboard motor, and make elemental art using our very own chromatography centrifuge. Spend the rest of the day discovering chemical crystal structure under a digital microscope and make your own crystals in a pitri dish and transform special crystals into a real super bouncy ball to take home. Take home an additional crystal to experiment with for days after camp. Discover the endless possibilities of chemistry as you mix, mush, and brew up all kinds of chemical reactions in this camp day    

DAY 5: CRAZY CONCOCTIONS

Join us for a wacky day of whipping up crazy concoctions! A day like this truly puts the “MAD” into Mad Scientist. Campers will experiment with things that glow and make things of their own that phosphoresce, investigate the properties of various super absorbent polymers as the expand exponentially or make water disappear, unravel the mystery behind hydrophobic materials, and witness various chemical eruptions that produce exothermic foam. Ooze and Goop is definitely the name of the game in this camp day! An active game and hands-on activity with polymer paper clips and cross-linking marbles will help campers discover the amazing properties of polymers and learn what makes these molecules so unusual. These key components get put in action when campers make their very own Mad Science Putty. This putty is extra special because they learn how to make it glow! This glowing goop gets charged with a mini black light that campers can take home. We will also see what happens when glow chemicals are added to jelly marbles that you get to take-home in your own test tube!

For more information about Mad Science Camps, go to www.maine.madscience.org or call 878-2222

POLICIES

Parents may drop of their child as early as 8:45 am

If a parent is more than 10 minutes late to pick up a child, a late pick up fee will be charged at $1/minute.  Payment should be given to the Mad Science Instructor on the day of late pick up or by the next morning before camp starts.