Wayne Community College’s North Carolina Science Festival event will be virtual this year.
The college will host an “Air Cannon Extravaganza” online 10-11 a.m. on Saturday, April 24. It is free and open to all registered participants.
“The air cannon activity is a simple experiment that can be conducted at home with readily available materials,” said WCC Biology Instructor Sondi Hoffman, the college’s NCSciFest coordinator. “That made it a perfect activity for this year’s virtual science festival.”
Experiment kits will be provided for the first 100 registered children. A list of materials will be posted for those who do not get a kit but want to do the experiment. A demonstration video on how to make an air cannon and the science behind it will be supplied.
Families can register at http://bit.ly/WCC2021SciFest. Deadline to register is Friday, April 16.
Registered families may pick up kits in front of the Wayne Learning Center (building with the flag poles) on the college’s main campus in Goldsboro between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday, April 17. This will be a drive-up-only event and masks will be required for pick up.
On Saturday, April 24 at 10 a.m., all who have registered can tune into the live demo to complete the experiment. A link will be emailed to all registered participants. The demonstration will also be recorded for later viewing.
The activity is geared to students in grades two through five but will be fun and educational for the whole family, according to Hoffman.
“Students in lower grades will learn basic physics things like air as a gas,” Hoffman said. “For older participants, the goal is to get them to think about air and what it can do when it moves. The air cannon provides a way to ‘see’ that flow, which in this case, is a ‘vortex,’” Hoffman said.
This is the third time Wayne Community College has provided an official NCSciFest event for the community. It is one of hundreds of events that will be held this April that will focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics activities for people of all ages across North Carolina.
About the North Carolina Science Festival
Founded in 2010, the North Carolina Science Festival is the first statewide science festival in the United States. Through a series of community-based events each April (hosted by schools, colleges, libraries, museums, parks, businesses, and other local organizations), the Festival celebrates the economic, educational, and cultural impacts of science in North Carolina. It is an initiative of Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more information, visit ncscifest.org.
