Two Public Outreach Events on
Back to Back Weekends in May

Most recent volunteer schedule. Four (4) volunteers wanted for each time slot at the NBC 17 event and 3 for each time slot at the Polar Palooza.

1. NBC 17 Health and Fitness Fair, May 17 and May 18 from 9:00 am until 6:00 pm each day at the Jim Graham Building at the State of North Carolina Fairgrounds in Raleigh; information or volunteer.
2. Polar Palooza Exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, May 24 and May 25 from 9:00-5:00 Saturday and noon-5:30 pm Sunday; information or volunteer. Note that this event is scheduled for the Memorial Day Weekend.

The format of the NBC 17 event will be very similar to that of the state fair each year. We will have booth demonstrations with liquid nitrogen and dry ice as well as density demonstrations with the Cartesian diver, Cokes that float and sink, soap bubbles that float in carbon dioxide, etc. We will also make coffee filter butterflies. We'd like a minimum of 4 volunteers for each time slot; if we have more then volunteers can take turns participating in the event.

The format of Polar Palooza Exhibit will be a single table like the event that we organize for the National Chemistry Week in the fall where we have many tables. However, the activities will be different from anything that the Section has done before and we are still collecting ideas* of what to show. Please send ideas that could demonstrate properties of ice related to the polar ice caps: bill_switzer@ncsu.edu.

For visitors and volunteers on Sunday AFTER the exhibit closes, the Museum will remain open until 9:00 pm for a lecture that looks at the polar ice caps on earth as a model for the polar ice caps on Mars. Following the lecture, the Mars Phoenix Probe is scheduled to land on Mars. The landing will be carried by live feed from NASA and a NASA Scientist will be available to answer questions. There is currently no information about the Mars program on the Museum web site, but look for this to be added later. We'd like a minimum of 3 volunteers for each time slot; if we have more then volunteers can take turns participating in the event.

*Demonstrations planned for the Polar Palooza Exhibit at the Museum:

• Drop a block of ice into a brim full glass of water to show that the water overflows suggesting that glaciers which break off or melt and flow into the oceans will raise the sea level.
• Allow the block of ice remaining in the brim full glass of water to melt to show that even though the ice rises above the rim of the glass, the water level does not rise any further on melting. This demonstration shows that melting of ice in the polar oceans will not raise the sea level.
• Measure the temperature of ice in water and ice in salt water to show that ice melts at a lower temperature in salt water than in fresh water showing that the oceans may melt faster than the glaciers melt.