World Science Festival 2010

First thing we did was pick up tickets for Astronaut Diary: Living in Space. The presentation didn't start till 1130, so we had time to check out the World Science Festival Street Fair beforehand. Our first stop was the Rutgers Dynamic Physics Demonstrations. (See video I'll post separately as soon as Blogger video uploading decides to work for me, sigh...) We learned about Prehensile-tailed Skinks from the Philadelphia Zoo. Then we went to NASA's outside area and enjoyed looking at some space equipment, and playing NASA Mythbusters, a quiz game.









Then it was time to head over to see astronauts Sandra Magnus and Leland Melvin (and a video message from astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who is currently aboard the International Space Station), as well as space suit designer Dava Newman and her prototype Bio Suit, which is intended to replace the current bulky and cumbersome suits with something far more flexible.











After the show, we wandered the street fair some more and enjoyed some of the many performances going on. At Billy B's science and nature songs concert, Mikro was one of the kids who wound up onstage dancing to the dragonfly song. He really enjoyed Galileo: The Starry Messenger (and wound up on stage again. Sense a pattern here?)



Then we checked out the robotics demos.



And ran to Battery Park to see the full size model of the Hubble's upcoming successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.



And ran some more to 41 Broad Street, to check out Astronomy's New Messengers:The Exhibit, about Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which works not with light, but with gravitational waves.



Then we wandered the Wall Street area a bit, taking in such sights as the New York Stock Exchange, Federal Hall (where George Washington took the Innaugural Oath and became our first President), and the Trinity Church Graveyard.

Then, totally exhausted, we limped home...