Virtual Science Festival Starting October 27th

We are excited to announce a Virtual Science Festival scheduled to start October 27th!  This week-long Science Outreach event will combine many components from our annual Exploration-U: Community Science Nights and Haunted-U, our Halloween-themed campus event.  While we will miss interacting with everyone in person, we are looking forward to our virtual format instead!  Several graduate student groups are presenting videos and fascinating science demonstrations to explain their research projects.  Plus, there will be time each day to interact with Penn State researchers for Q&A sessions. Follow us on Facebook for links and more updates! Also, take a peek at one of the video presentations below.  We look forward to you joining us for this family-friendly week of discovery!

Autumn Leaf Collections

Fall has arrived, and the leaves of deciduous trees are starting to reveal their brilliant colors! Collecting and identifying leaves is a fun, Fall activity that is based on science!  We encourage you to explore your neighborhood, a local park, or a wooded trail to find an assortment of colorful specimens. (Young explorers are reminded to take an adult or two along!)

To identify collected leaves and the trees that they fall from, the link below from the Penn State Extension may be helpful.  Enjoy your leaf collecting and let us know what leaves you find! Your pictures can be shared with us for our next newsletter in November!

Explore Lincoln Caverns

One of our Exploration-U partners is the nearby and educational Lincoln Caverns in Huntingdon, PA! This year Lincoln Caverns and Whisper Rocks are open for their 90th season and carefully following COVID-19 guidelines. Visit their website below to learn about group tours of the caves.  In addition to preserving the natural cave formations and making new discoveries, the goal of Lincoln Caverns is to educate the public about cave formation, karst (which is landscape created by the dissolution of limestone), and bats (the natural residents of caves).

This Fall, starting October 14th, Lincoln Caverns will hold Workshop Wednesdays. The series of four Wednesdays will feature different themes each week and will include two related workshops and panning for fossils or gems.  Guests may purchase tickets for one week (which will include a cavern tour), two, three, or all four weekly sessions. Click here to learn more about each week's theme. 

Ghosts and Goblins, Lincoln Cavern's signature events will occur the last four weekends in October. The Saturday afternoon family-friendly tours provide just the right amount of Halloween "light-fright" and fun, with cave education mixed in along the way! 

If you can't make it to Lincoln Caverns this year, enjoy the extensive photo gallery on their website or subscribe to their YouTube Channel to see some virtual tours! Lincoln Caverns is working hard to fascinate and educate and to safely make lasting memories for all their visitors!

Spooky Glowing Pumpkins!

At our annual Haunted-U event, painting pumpkins with fluorescent paint is a popular exhibit. The activity helps to explain the phenomenon of bioluminescence - the ability of some creatures to glow!  Many creatures such as jellyfish, toads, insects and even bacteria have this fascinating, natural ability.

Bioluminescence can occur from fluorescence or phosphorescence, or both in some species. In either instance, special molecules in the creatures glow when their electrons are excited by energy. With fluorescence, the molecules glow immediately when  light at invisible wavelengths energizes them.  That's why ultra-violet light, or a black light, is needed to see glowing!  Phosphorescent molecules, on the other hand, require time to collect energy from another source, such as the sun or a lamp. Once charged with energy, phosphorescent molecules will glow in the dark for a varied amount of time! 

The glowing pumpkins from Haunted-U provide a great example of fluorescence since a black light is needed to see the glowing molecules. At home, your family may be interested in painting pumpkins with glow-in- the-dark paint, found at craft or hardware stores.  Phosphorescent molecules in the paint will require the painted pumpkins to first absorb energy by sitting under a lamp, or in sunlight.  Then, in the dark, the stored energy will be emitted and the painted pumpkins should glow for several minutes to hours!  Remember to paint in an area with good ventilation and that paint is flammable.  Have fun painting spooky, phosphorescent pumpkins!