Math – Salem Happenings

Help Your Community on Family Volunteer Day

Are you looking for a way to teach your kids to help others? Would you like to find a way that you and your family can get involved in your community? Well, if you answered yes to either of these questions, you may be in luck because it just so happens that tomorrow (Saturday, November 19, 2016) is Family Volunteer Day. Family Volunteer Day is a nationwide event, designed by Points of Light and sponsored by the Walt Disney Company, that encourages families across the country to carry out acts of kindness and/or volunteer to complete projects for their local communities and neighborhoods.

In fact, if you’re in the Boston area, there is a local Family Volunteer Day event in Dorchester from 10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. on Saturday (November 19, 2016.) This event, which is run by Boston Cares, will allow you and your family members ages 5 and up to help create basic engineering kits, make-your-own robot kits, and other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) kits for students in the Boston Public School System. For more information and/or to register for the event (registration is required), please visit the Family Volunteer Day page on the Boston Cares website.

And, if you are not in the Boston area, you can still find opportunities to volunteer in your local area by using the search feature on the Points of Light website.

Photo credit: byzantiumbooks via Visual hunt / CC BY

STEM Activities for Kids: Girls Day and the Mini Maker Faire

The ghouls, goblins, and ghosts have all returned to whence they came but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the fun has to end. In fact, if you’re looking for a way that your kids can have some fun and learn something too, there are two events in the Boston area this weekend that will definitely help.

First, if you have a young woman in your family who loves science and engineering or you would really like to get your daughter interested in science and engineering, there’s probably no better event to spark a young girl’s interest in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) than Girls Day at the MIT Museum. This is because this biannual event, which is scheduled to take place from 11:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. on Saturday (November 5, 2016), will give your daughter the opportunity to meet women engineers, learn about robotics and coding, and even try building and programming some robots herself. For more information on Girls Day at the MIT Museum, which is included in the admission fee for the museum and open to all girls ages 10 and up, please visit the MIT Museum’s Engage page.

However, if you have a young boy, a group of children of different genders, or you just don’t want to pay to get into the Museum, you can always head over to a local Barnes and Noble this weekend. This is because Barnes and Noble is hosting their second annual Mini Maker Faire from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. on Saturday and Sunday (November 5th and 6th, 2016). This event, which is free and open to the public, will allow you and your children ages 6 and up to meet designers, engineers, and teachers who will demonstrate their skills with coding, programmable music, robots, virtual reality, and a whole lot more. Best of all, the events at each store will feature games and other activities that will allow your children to create and experience the wonders of science firsthand. For more information on the Barnes and Noble Mini Maker Faire and/or to find a list of events for each store, please visit Barnes and Noble’s Mini Maker Faire page.

Photo credit: roboticage® via Visualhunt / CC BY

Blinded by Science

There’s a pretty good chance that you’ve heard the expression “blinded by science” somewhere. In fact, if you were around during the 80’s, you may have heard the song by Thomas Dolby entitled “She Blinded Me With Science” or the Foreigner song entitled “Blinded by Science.” You may have even heard the song or the phrase more recently in well-known shows like Breaking Bad or the Crazy Ones. However, even if you are familiar with the expression, have you ever stopped to figure out what it means? Well, if you haven’t, the expression “blinded by science” refers to the act of using a series of complicated concepts (or, at least, concepts that appear to be complicated) to intentionally confuse someone. In other words, if you are “blinding someone with science,” you are using your scientific knowledge (or your skill at making stuff up) to leave someone completely baffled.

Now, if you would like to have the scientific knowledge to blind someone with science or you enjoy when other people blind you with science, there are a couple of events this weekend that you should definitely check out. First, the MIT Museum, in collaboration with a number of local businesses, educational institutions, and community organizations, is hosting the Cambridge Science Festival. This festival, which began last weekend and runs until this Sunday (April 27, 2014), will allow you and your family to attend a series of activities, performances, and workshops to learn about holograms, math, optics, space, and a whole lot more. For more information on the festival and/or to register for a specific event, please visit the MIT Museum website or the Cambridge Science Festival website.

Secondly, if you can’t make it into the city until later and/or you’ve always wanted to learn more about the stars, the Museum of Science has the program for you. This is because the Museum of Science offers a special program on Friday nights from the beginning of March to Thanksgiving called Astronomy After Hours. This program, which runs from 8:30 to 10:00 PM every Friday (weather permitting), will allow you and your family to see stars, planets, and all of the other wonders of space through the equipment at the Gilliland Observatory. Best of all, the program is open to the public and is completely free. For more information on the Astronomy After Hours program, please visit the Museum of Science website or call the Astronomy After Hours hotline at 617-589-0267.

Photo credit: jurvetson / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)