Topic - Conferences

Having a Blast at the NAEYC 2008 Conference

If you attended the annual NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) conference last week in Dallas, Texas, it wasn’t hard to find the Steve Spangler Science booth. All you had to do was listen for the shouts of surprise as we launched over 600 Mentos Geysers with the Geyser Tube™ in our own take on the classic dunk tank… the Boy in a Box. It was great to see the teacher reactions when they pulled the string and sent a blast of Coke raining down on our never-tiring Boys in a Box.

As my team can attest, I lost my voice at the conference… just like I do every year… from explaining to everyone who passed by the science behind the Mentos and Diet Coke reaction.  It’s important as educators that we don’t just drop some Mentos in a Coke and call it science.  The resulting geyser is a great effect, but you are missing the key piece of the lesson.  Shoot off a geyser, then listen as your students start to ask questions… “Why does that happen?”…  “What if we used more Mentos?”…

Mosaic 2008 – Teachers Share Their Favorite Hands-on Science Experiences

We just wrapped up our first ever MOSAIC science workshop for teachers… and we had a blast. Here’s the idea behind MOSAIC – amazing teachers from diverse backgrounds coming together to share best practices and to learn how to the tools in their classrooms to create unforgettable learning experiences. All of this year’s participants received a special invitation from our workshop team because they had previously attended our week-long Hands-on Science Institute from Regis University or, more recently, they attended a three-day workshop called Science in the Rockies. I as said, this was the first time we ever offered a small-scale, very one-on-one training of this caliber. Judging from response… I think we’ll do it again in 2010.

UPDATE – MOSAIC 2010 is scheduled for June 23-25, 2010. If you previous attended Science in the Rockies, you’re eligible to register for MOSAIC. Learn more about the hands-on science training for teachers at MOSAIC 2010

Here are just a few memories from the MOSAIC 2008 workshop experience…

Geysers Galore – 700 Learning Experiences at NAEYC

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!”