Dinner With The Scientist

Me and my friends with Principal Avent, Ms. Araki and Mrs. Apaydin 

This year I was finally able to participate in "Dinner with a Scientist"; it was held at the Snow Building in the Oakland Zoo. Because there were so many kids participating, the event repeated for two more days.  First we toured the zoo and after we had dinner with three scientists that rotated through our table. One was Natasha Naidoo, another was Elizabeth Donald, Liz for short, and I got her signature. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the third scientist. Elizabeth Donald  is a Senior Scientist with the Clorox Company. Everyone got a souvenir program, inside is a short bio for Liz and the other scientists. Here is a quote from her bio: “Science is exciting because it constantly reveals new things about who we are and the universe around us.  The best part is that ANYONE can be a scientist!”  I agree also that anyone can be a scientist.

I have a puzzle for you, here is a copy of our dinner menu. Can you guess what we had for dinner? Put your answer in the comment box. 

Menu

 

Turbulent 530 nm Salad with Various Suspensions & Emulsions

Triticum Globules with Lipid Spread

Malus domestica Extract

Dihydrogen Monoxide in Two States with Citrus Accents

Sodium Chloride & Piper nigrum

Steamed Random Plant Parts

Oryza sativa Seeds & Plant Material

Grilled Gallus gallus with Allium cepa & Fungus

Herbaceous Durum Forms with Solanum lycopersicum Sauce

Heat-Treated Cacao Carbohydrate Solids with Ripened Plant Ovaries

Wrapped Cacao with Metha or Rubus

  

Nanogardens

All of the flowers are crystals of silicon and minerals. Wim Noorduin sculpts the stems and blossoms by tweaking the environment in which the crystals grow.

Engineers at Harvard University have figured out a way to make microscopic sculptures of roses, tulips and violets, each smaller than a strand of hair.
This  gallery of tiny 'nanoflowers' grown on the surface of pennies and glass. They're not actually flowers though, they just look like them. In reality they're microscopic bits of carefully grown crystals. "Like meth." Exactly like meth.
There are roses that would make a perfect corsage for Abraham Lincoln's jacket lapel on the penny.

Wave Energy Science Project

Wave Energy project at Chabot Space and Science Center

This year for the OUSD Science Fair, I made a generator using electromagnetic induction for my project. The process was discovered by a guy named Michael Faraday.  I built my Wave Energy project by having a neodymium magnet go side to side in a tube wrapped with copper wire. I built two, one was about 3ft in length and 2.5ft in width with a mast that was about 6 feet tall.  That was the one I tested in the pool. I generated about 3.12 volts from that one.  The other one was a scaled down version that I used to demo at Chabot. We, me and my Dad, goofed around so it took about 3-4 weeks to build both models. But I won "Most Popular Project"; I was one of the five students picked to have their project displayed at Chabot Space and Science Center and I received a medal. People had lots of questions. Mostly "What is it?" and or "What does it do?". I also taught a high school science teacher about electromagnetic induction; she never knew about it. She said she has been working as a science teacher for 4 years.