The Mentos Geyser made history once again as the star attraction at the NAEYC 2006 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the rumble of the crowd in the exhibit hall, you could hear someone from the Spangler Science booth yell, “GEYSER!” followed by a few screams and cheers of excitement. The “geyser” was actually the eruption of a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke powered by Mentos. As soon as people approached the booth and saw the mountain of soda and the display of Mentos, they knew what could happen… but most people didn’t believe that we would actually launch the geysers from behind the booth. Surprise!

Instead of just launching the Diet Coke just for fun sake, we used each opportunity to deliver a quick science lesson and followed it up by putting one of our Geyser Tube Experiments in each of the teacher’s hands. Out of the 11,000 people reported to be in attendance at the event, we personally handed out 7,000 Geyser Tube Experiments (which included a roll of Mentos). We even had a few guest “geyserists” take center stage in the booth and try their hand at a launch.

This is not the first time these educators had seen or performed our Mentos Geyser which was featured on stage three years ago in Anaheim, California at the 2003 NAEYC Conference. One teacher commented, “We’ve been doing this experiment for the past three years, and it took the rest of the world this long to catch up!”

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Popularity: 25% [?]

It was easy to see that this Steve Spangler session at the NAEYC 2006 Conference was going to be a little different. The stage was filled with the usual Spangler stuff… a vacuum cleaner, eggs, a saw, bowling balls, toilet paper rolls, giant bags, an aquarium of water, a violin bow, plenty of Alka-Seltzer, potatoes, Diet Coke and, of course, Mentos. Even before Bobbi finished the introduction, there were Mentos Geysers erupting and people running!

My thanks to everyone who attended my session at the NAEYC 2006 conference in Atlanta, Georgia. You’ll find links to the experiments and activities that I shared during the session as well as a few favorites that didn’t make it into the list of 20 Cool Science Activities Under $20. Click on the link below to download a PDF of the session handout:

Steve Spangler’s NAEYC 2006 Handout

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Popularity: 17% [?]

I overheard a group of teachers on the elevator this afternoon talking about calling in “sick” in order to attend this amazing conference (NAEYC 2004 - see previous blog entries). Why? Because their school administrators don’t support this type of continuing education. And we wonder why our education system is failing! How is a teacher supposed to learn new teaching strategies and techniques without surrounding him or herself with other professionals who are experts in their field? In other words, teachers need to attend conference and professional development seminars just as doctors, lawyers and other professionals do. Let me go out on a limb here and guess that your doctor, dentist or lawyer doesn’t have to lie to anyone in order to attend a conference. Professionals don’t have to lie to further their education in order to better serve their clients. Hmmm? Maybe we might want to start treating teachers like professionals and stop complaining when they ask to attend a conference.

Popularity: 3% [?]

If your child’s teacher is out sick this week, think twice. She just might be in California with 25,000 other early childhood teachers at the largest conference of its kind in the world. Anaheim, California is host to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) annual conference. The doors flew open at noon today and the exhibit hall looked like a life-size ant farm with thousands of people scrambling for every free thing they could find. It didn’t take long for science hungry teachers to find our booth and cash in on the free Tornado Tube offer for the first 1,000 teachers. This year we’re fortunate to have 6 teacher Ambassadors from our Hands-on Science Institute behind the booth to share their teaching ideas that are guaranteed to make science fun.

Popularity: 3% [?]