Volunteering at Imagination Station, again

Last year, a group of friends and I volunteered at PBS's Imagination Station event, which features fun and educational activities for young children who are fans of PBS Kids television programming. This year, we did it again. I was assigned to one of two Sid the Science Kid rooms, fortunately the one for slightly older children.

I and one of my friends managed the electricity table. When children arrived, I showed them a "circuit" with one wire missing and then lit up the bulb by making that connection, explaining that electricity only flows when there's a circuitous path. I increased the brightness of the bulb by inserting additional batteries.

Nearby, we were provided with several question-and-answer sheets. Each cell in the table had a metal pin through it, and wires on the back connected each question to its answer. When the children touched one free wire of a bulb-and-battery apparatus to the question and the other wire to its answer, the bulb lit. For some reason, the division quiz had several questions with the same numerical answer, but there was one answer choice per question and only one instance of the answer worked. Since that would not do, my partner and I inserted wires on the back as appropriate to make all copies of each answer electrically equivalent.

My favorite demonstration and knowledge fragment of the event - which I only remembered late in the day - was that batteries add or subtract brightness (i.e. voltage) from the circuit depending on their direction relative to the other batteries. It was interesting to hear the children's attempted explanations of that phenomenon; some came much closer than others.

Two more college decisions

Apparently 'tis the season to hear back from colleges.

• Reed College, accepted! They even sent the admission letter in a nice box, with confetti folded inside it. Their first-year humanities course has a focus on the Iliad, and they included a copy of that book too.
• University of Chicago, waitlisted. Interesting.

More admission decisions

A few more college admission decisions came in since last post:

• UC San Diego, accepted! This is looking like a very good option.
• MIT, rejected. Not surprising.
• Washington University, rejected. Somewhat surprising, but I had about zero interest in actually attending there after getting accepted in a couple other places, so no disappointment.