The Children's Science Center has partnered with Leadership Fairfax's Emerging Leaders Institute (ELI) to conduct a series of seven community forums in Northern Virginia during the first half of 2010.  Dubbed the "Community Conversations" project, the goals are to spread awareness about the proposed Children's Science Center and to learn more about the experience the community seeks in a children's science center. 

 

The first Community Conversation was held with parents on January 21 at the Reston Community Center Lake Anne.  Despite the weather reports calling for wintry weather, we had a strong turnout of parents who came to discuss their ideas and vision for a children's science center.  The parents attending had children ranging from infants to high schoolers but they all shared the belief that there is a great need for a children's science center in the area.  The discussions were robust and covered topics such as: gaps in current science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, the need for a children's science center, the best/worst aspects of other children's activities and museums, entry fees, competitive museums and ways to build awareness and support.

 

Here are a few thoughts from the parents:

 

Thank you to all the parents who joined us for this first Community Conversation!  Your feedback and creative ideas will be very beneficial to the effort to bring a children's science center to our community.

There are six more Community Conversations planned with each targeting a specific stakeholder group including:  

A:  The short answer to the question is yes -- it is indeed extremely unlikely that two complex snowflakes will look exactly alike.  It's so extremely unlikely, in fact, that even if you looked at every one ever made you would not find any exact duplicates.

Q:  Why is snow white?

A:  No, it's not a white dye.  Snow is made of ice crystals, and up close the individual crystals look clear, like glass.  A large pile of snow crystals looks white for the same reason a pile of crushed glass looks white.  Incident light is partially reflected by an ice surface, again just as it is from a glass surface.  When you have a lot of partially reflecting surfaces, which you do in a snow bank, then incident light bounces around and eventually scatters back out.  Since all colors are scattered roughly equally well, the snow bank appears white.

Q: How many sides do snowflakes have?

A: Snowflakes in nature has six sides.

Cutting snowflakes out of paper is a good way to learn about snow.  Rather than making random cuts in the folded paper, try making snowflakes that look like the real thing!  That will add a challenge to the project, and require some thinking.  It's more difficult than it sounds!  The picture at right has some real snow crystals (click here for printable file) to try copying. Remember, there are no eight-sided or four-sided snowflakes in nature, so hold out for real six-sided crystals.  For templates to help create six-sided snowflakes, click here.

Of course, if you don't want to use real paper, you can also cut out snowflakes on the web at SnowDays.  Here again, try to create snowflakes that look like the real thing.