Families milled about in front of Hilbun Hall and the Cobb Institute of Archeology at 4 p.m. Saturday, officially beginning the Science Night at the Museums event at Mississippi State University. Various departments at MSU displayed their crafts and experiments, spread across the three floors of Hilbun Hall and across the street at the Cobb Institute.
The Cobb Institute Museum on the bottom floor of the building offered various exhibits displaying Egyptian artifacts, tablets from Nineveh and a statue of King Amenhotep III that sits at the entrance to the museum. A scavenger hunt, which offered a reward for each completed hunt, was designed for the children.
A demonstration with liquid nitrogen also took place outside of Hilbun Hall on the grass. Flowers were frozen in liquid nitrogen and then shattered on impact. Some of the children could stomp on the flowers to shatter them on the ground. A large plastic trash can filled with ping pong balls caused a loud boom when the liquid nitrogen was placed inside in a bottle, spraying ping pong balls across the area that kids could grab and bring back to the demonstration.
Bob Swanson, otherwise known as “Stormin’ Bob Swanson,” delivered one of the other featured demonstrations that families could sit in on. They could watch his short show in one of the classrooms of the first floor of Hilbun Hall. Swanson, an instructor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at MSU, presented scientific principles in a dynamic way that kept the audience invested. For example, he used a harmonica and guitar to sing songs about the colors of the rainbow, encouraging all the children to sing along with him.
Ben Bachman, a community member and father to two daughters, spoke about how his family enjoys attending the Science Night at the Museum.
“We try to come every year,” Bachman said. “We find the Science Night at the museum just to be a really fascinating and fun-filled event. It’s really cool because it is educational and fun. This is the first time we caught Stormin’ Bob Swanson, the singing weatherman, and his fantastic demonstration. We had a good time trying to sing along with him.”
Amy Moe-Hoffman, coordinator of the Science Night at the Museum event, discussed the history of the event that provides fun for groups like Bachman’s family.
“The first time we did this particular event was in 2017. Prior to that, we did something called ‘Darwin week,’” Moe-Hoffman said. “We had things all throughout the entire week that were just lectures and stuff. It morphed into this because we wanted to give the families and the community members something to look forward to every year.”
According to Moe-Hoffman, the event really catered to the community’s needs.
“It’s really been well-received over the years, and it just keeps growing – both in the number of people that come to visit us, but also the volunteers and entities from campus that want to participate and even people off campus. It’s just something that I feel was lacking in the community, and there was a hunger for it,” Moe-Hoffman said. “It’s really exciting to be able to provide that opportunity for those people that come to campus to learn about the science and research going on here.”
One of those partnerships Moe-Hoffman mentioned was displayed down the hallway of the first floor of Hilbun Hall. There was a table display for NASA with model rockets and a meteorite that kids could hold. Louis Wasson, a volunteer for NASA and a part of their solar system ambassador program, spoke about the program and what they do for the community.
“We are an enthusiastic group of people – nerds, basically space nerds – that go out and tell our local communities about the exciting missions that NASA is doing,” Wasson said. “We have the Artemis program, which this year is going to send four astronauts back to the moon. Anything that promotes STEM education is what we are trying to do.”
The College of Veterinary Medicine also offered a display of parasites pulled from various animals that could be viewed in jars. One table displayed parasites that are found in snakes, with one parasite that lives in the lungs of a boa constrictor. Another table for the display presented jars of parasites that are found in marine mammals, as well as the skull of a sea lion with stained teeth.
The second floor of Hilbun Hall held a display with visual illusions. It consisted of various hands-on activities for families, including a camera that made one person look larger than the others in a picture. Another table featured a screen that would position celebrity pictures side-by-side. The normal features of the celebrities’ faces turned grotesque when the viewer’s vision focused on the middle of the screen between the pictures.
On the third floor, the student members of the American Chemical Society did demonstrations with liquid nitrogen as well. Two student volunteers, Hannah Hawkins, a sophomore biochemistry major, and Zori Jackson, a senior chemistry major, spoke about their science demonstration.
“We put balloons in liquid nitrogen, and they would shrink. And when we took them out, they would re-expand,” Hawkins said. “We also did something with tennis balls to show the effects of nitrogen.”
“The kids ate it up,” Jackson added. “We had self-inflating balloons. It’s a citric acid and baking soda packet, and when you pop it, it releases carbon dioxide gas, which is what you exhale. So, if you keep hitting it, it speeds up the reaction.”
In addition to Hawkins and Jackson’s demonstrations, a chemistry demonstration — also on the third floor — used colored dyes to demonstrate the separation of mixtures, proving that the color of a piece of candy is made up of many separate colors.
The Science Night at the Museum offered families an opportunity to engage in activities that were entertaining. Children and community members had the opportunity to learn about science in a fun, unique environment.