Sunday, October 21, 2007 ;
6:26 AM
Oct 19
School Picture Day and Robots exhibition
The school had the photographer come in today to take pics. Although ds1 had no school today, I still had to bring him for the class picture at 9.15am. Which meant I had to set off at 8am cos mornings meant heavy traffic.
After that, I didn't want to waste the long journey (gasoline, time, money, and effort dressing and dragging ds2 along too) so we went to the nearby Discovery Center at Gateway. They were having a travelling Robots exhibition that just arrived.
Just nice. The boys love robots and machines.
Above right: There were stations where you can build your own robot. This one was to build a robot that can wash dishes. There were parts like hands, eyes and so on for the robot body, and then attachments with a sponge, so you can piece them all together, then attach it to the power source. Very fun! Kids squealed in excitement when the power was switched on and the sponge thingy started to vibrate and turn round and round.
Above: Robots from famous movies were featured too, and you can sit in this simulator and watch a robot movie.
Also present were stations where you can stack and arrange many dominoes, and get the domino effect to do work like move a lever, ring a bell etc. There were guiding lines so it wasn't too difficult. I watched a school group do theirs too (above left).
Above left: there were also automated robotic arms for us to control (move up, down, left, right and also rotate the "wrist"). Aim was to pick up blocks of various shapes. I spent quite some time there myself cos it was fun and usually if I wanted to play something like that outside, it would cost me money (like those toy grabber machines in arcades). So you could hone your skills here then go try the toy grabber. :-)
After that we did the center's regular stuff which I had posted on before (our 1 yr membership is still valid). And attended a fire safety workshop, where a fireman came to talk to the kids in an interactive way about fire safety. Fire safety is very important in Utah (as well as California etc of course), not like in Singapore where it is so humid, less fires start.
Besides teaching them what to do when a fire occurs, he also wore the full gear to show them how firemen work. He also demonstrated using the oxygen mask and how they crawl on the floor to save people, using only their left hands to feel around them, while the fireman behind would be trailing by catching hold of the pant leg of the fireman in front. Cos usually in a building on fire, visibility is very low.
He also showed us this alarm device attached to each fireman, where, in case the any fireman fell in the cause of duty, and lays motionless on the ground for (was it?) 15seconds, a shrill alarm will sound, and the rest of the firemen will come save him.
It was very educational and interesting for me also. And at then end, he gave each child a fireman's helmet. So it was really fun for the kids.
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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