Science and Submarines

 The Philadelphia Science Festival, which began last weekend with a fair on the parkway, continues through this upcoming weekend and has brought with it many exciting activities to our museum. Down at our docks we have the AJ MeerWald of the Bayshore Discovery Project taking students out for educational sailing trips, and to accompany them we have guests from the Rozalia Project giving hands on lessons in environmental science.
Today, while our students from Urban Promise were here at the shop, they were able to go on our dock on the Delaware river and learn about the hazards of waterborn litter and the efforts that the Rozalia Project and others are doing to remediate them. Rozalia's remotely operated submarine is a great introduction for any student to marine technologies and environmental remediation. This certainly is a lesson they will not soon forget.

Rudders, steam, and milling wood! -Urban Promise

Today we learned about steambending. We also learned about the rudder of a boat and how it helps steer. We put wood through the planer to make it smooth and then drew on the pattern for the rudder.
-Danielle

Trebuchet you say! -CHAD

Today, we learned how to build a mini version of a trebuchet. We used cut blocks of wood, a ruler, screws, and a drill to help put it all together. Along the way we made numerous mistakes, but the question is will the mistakes effect the ability of the catapult? If you perfect a smaller model you can perfect a bigger version.

-Alexis DiBella