Open House
Mark your calendars!
Our 2009 Open House is scheduled for Saturday, February 21.
It's free! It's fun! It's for everyone!
Every February, the Magnet Lab invites the public to spend the day at its world-class research laboratory. Our 2009 Open House, scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 21, will feature a Kids Zone designed for children pre-K-8.
Inside the Kids Zone, visitors will find lots of opportunities for hands-on experimentation. Planned activities include, among others:
- A bubble wall
- Solar car racing
- A demonstration of pressure that uses a bell jar, vacuum pump and Peeps – yes, Peeps – to make its impressive point.
- Magnet toys that introduce preschoolers to magnetism by showing how opposites attract.
As it does every year, this free event features something for young and old alike: hands-on demonstrations, self-guided tours, games, food, give-aways and the chance to meet and chat with our scientists and other Mag Lab staff.
Check out these Open House links:
Open House offers an up-close look at our record-breaking 45-tesla hybrid magnet, our 900-megahertz superconducting magnet and other powerful research instruments. Booths line the hallways of our 370,000 square-foot facility, featuring explanations and activities related to physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences. Dozens of other science-related organizations from the area participate in the Open House, including the Tallahassee Museum and the FSU Coastal and Marine Laboratory.
With some of the cool demonstrations, our Open House can almost seem like a magic show. But these are no tricks! Here are just a few of the stranger-than-science-fiction displays you can see at our next Open House:
- Gooey liquid oxygen that defies gravity, “dripping up” to meet a magnet.
- A Van de Graaff generator that will give you a dose of static electricity – and a really rad hair day.
- Magnets that fall in super slow motion, thanks to eddy currents.
- A train that moves without touching the tracks, thanks to superconductivity.
- A cannon that demonstrates the power of pressure … by firing potatoes.
- Super-magnified images of everyday objects as you've never seen them.
- A chance to see what comets are made of – by cooking them up!
- The wildly popular Shrinking Quarter machine, which uses a single shot pulse magnet to shrink a quarter to about the size of a dime.
With information and activities targeting a variety of ages, this event has become a popular family outing and is a unique opportunity to show children how fun – yes, fun! – science can be.
For more information contact Susan Ray at sray@magnet.fsu.edu or (850) 644-9651.
