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Don’t Try This At Home!

Okay, Tuesday I went to Science after hours for the "Don't Try This At Home" themed science after hours.

It was fun.  Lots of stuff happening as usual.  Mostly they had lots of things involving liquid nitrogen.  Basically anything that could freeze and smash and explode was fair game and fairly popular as well!

I missed a lot of stuff though, that's for sure.  What I did do was the following:

Giant soap bubble monster thing that exploded and got soap everywhere

Filled up with Sodium Hexafluoride instead of Helium to talk super LOW instead of super HIGH sounding.

Watched fireworks things, like a guy lit stuff on fire out of his hand and threw it into the air.

Learned out watersheds worked, although I already knew this... I mostly was just listening while waiting for them to refill the free iced coffee station that Saxbys was running.

Got free iced coffee.

Tight roped walked in the Fels Planetarium, then watched a trapeze artist do various tricks and things involving balance and gravity and such.

Learned that pressure built up behind a cork... No matter HOW snug that cork on that bottle is... Will eventually result in someone losing an eye if they aren't watching out!  No one actually lost an eye when the cork popped.  But it was close!

Smashed frozen bouncy balls frozen solid by liquid nitrogen, hammered nails into wood using bananas also soaked in liquid nitrogen.

And a few other things.

I definitely missed the rubber band watermelon.  They had a display setup where you could add a rubber band to a watermelon.  The more rubber bands the more it became less watermelon shaped and more like it was going to burst into a million pieces from all the pressure behind all the rubber bands...

Eventually, it burst into a million pieces.

Missed the ball pit explosion.

Played a little bit of quizzo.  Mostly because I was just waiting for a beer in the beer line which happened to be the same place you play quizzo.

Watched various other puzzles and games be solved by people while sipping on the beer.

Anyways, there's SOOO much stuff to do.  I mean it's always impossible to be able to get to all of it.

Towards the end of the night though I started talking to two girls that worked at Penn.  They actually know the ICU docs that treated my mom.

I started to tell them about my mom and all the stuff she had like liver transplant and dialysis and her being in the ICU.  They kept asking questions.  One of them knows her GI doc.  She was going to tell him I said hello.  I met him a few times as well.  My mom totally thought he was super cute.  She would always tell me that.  He's married with a kid.  But my mom told me she thought he was cute.

Anyways one of them is a member and so members get access to this little member area.  I'm going to sign up to be a member too at the next event and hang out with them.  The other girl is supposed to become a member I think too.  Even if we don't become members we can all just hang out anyways.  They said they go to pretty much every single one.  SO that's kind of cool.

Although then on the walk back to my car after it was over I just was thinking about my mom a lot and missing her.  I had talked to the two girls for a good 20 or 30 minutes.  They kept asking questions about her and like all the times she'd been to Penn and all that and all the stuff she had.  They aren't actually nurses or doctors but they just work with the doctors in various departments.  So they knew a lot of people that treated my mom.  They even knew the one ICU doc that I had sat down with to discuss things towards the end with my mom.

It was kind of a little emotional.  But we had an interesting connection there in the train room of the Franklin Institute.  We became social media friends.  So anyways I'll try to find them next month.  I'm definitely going to go to ALL the science after hours events.  It's one of my most favorite things in the world at the moment!

So there you have it.  Cool stuff for sure.  Just make sure not to blow things up, freeze things with liquid nitrogen, or light anything on fire at home.