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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Printing in 3-D




Imagination Station is now home to a Fab @ Home "fabber". Technically Fab @ Home is a desktop fabricator that can make almost anything (within reason) right on your desk. The term "printer" is to help people understand the concept that this is something that can connect to your home computer and create objects when you hit "print." See the video below to understand more about how these work. It will be a few weeks before we get ours on the floor, so check back in on the progress. We have to be sure we know how to use it and design a display case for it. But, when it's ready it will be available for all to watch it work!


Wednesday, June 4, 2008

The Power of Asking Why


Today marks the 225th anniversary of the first hot-air balloon flight. Two brothers, who were from a family of paper manufacturers, saw ash rising from burning paper. From that observation they concluded that the hot air made things rise. From there they made a hypothesis and tested different hot-air balloons. The first public demonstrations was on June 4th, 1783.

This demonstrates the power of curiosity. This is what happens when we teach children not to simply accept what they see, but to ask questions. These brothers could have simply looked at the ash rising and never thought about it again. After all, ash has been rising as long as there has been fire. But, they asked "why?"

We hope to teach children to ask "why?" and "how?" Who knows what they may see that we have overlooked for all of history.

HT: Google, Wikipedia

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Wilson Daily Times Editorial Piece

The Wilson Daily Times ran a great editorial piece today supporting our museum. You can read the column here.