I’m leaving today for the Doubletree Hotel on Dixon Road by Pearson International Airport for the Science Teachers Association of Ontario (STAO) Annual Conference. Educators from all over Canada usually attend. Jeremy Hanson (Canadian Astronaut) will be speaking on Saturday morning. I can’t wait to hear him. I’ll try to line up an interview with him. The conference runs from Nov 15 – 17, 2012.I am doing two presentations. The first is “Building Balsawood Gliders to Scale” primarily for Grade 6 teachers. The second is entitled, “Taylor’s Toys” which is also the title of my book. I am currently working on the second draft. My second workshop will have educators doing an experiment on the multiplication of force. This will be followed by me teaching them how to build a pneumatically controlled Canadarm. And if there’s time, we’ll build a McDigger. The McDigger is a front-end loader using a medium sized McDonalds® French fries container. The construction of both of these toys appears in my book.
When I am not presenting, I’ll take in a couple of speakers, but most of my free time will be spent at the Web Site Booth. It is here that we show educators how to find resources of interest to them and how to navigate through our web site.
An attention-getter is the iron balls. We wrap one of the balls in aluminum foil and we strike the balls past each other. The result is a huge spark and a very loud noise. It’s an exothermic reaction and loads of fun.
I’ll post again following the conference.
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