Friday, April 4, 2014

Sharing the 'wow' of science

Emory chemist Doug Mulford blows a fireball at the Atlanta Science Festival expo March 29. Emory Photo/Video.

By Megan Terraso, Emory Report

Rows of children sat with rapt attention, their mouths agape at what they were seeing at the Atlanta Science Festival.

"That look of wonder is why we do it," says Douglas Mulford, director of undergraduate studies of chemistry and senior lecturer at Emory. "We wanted to show the 'wow' of science and show how fascinating it can be."

Mulford was one of many Emory faculty, staff and students who participated in 25 Emory demonstrations and exhibits at the Atlanta Science Festival March 22-29. The massive weeklong festival included more than 100 events at nearly 35 venues and everything from tours and film screenings to trivia nights and flashy science demonstrations.

At the festival's science expo March 29 at the Georgia World Congress Center, Mulford and several Emory students put on a science stage show with bubbling beakers and exploding balloons to a packed room with an audience of around 1,000.

Mulford also oversaw the very popular "cornstarch dance pit," a three foot by three foot pit where visitors could dance or sink in the cornstarch and water mix. "As long as you dance, you stay up. When you stop, you sink. That was a lot of fun," Mulford says.

Other Emory exhibits at the expo, which attracted tens of thousands of visitors, included monarch butterflies, the opportunity to touch a real brain and a booth that allowed visitors to swab the bottom of their shoe or their ear and follow the growth of the bacteria they'd swabbed over a few hours or days via a website.

Read more at Emory Report.

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