The Ceramic and Glass Industry Foundation participated in the fourth annual Big Science Celebration at COSI in Columbus on Saturday, May 7, to round off the week-long COSI Science Festival. The festival took place in-person after hosting virtual science festival events during the last two years.
“A Community Celebration of Science: A four-day community festival that will engage learners of all ages – bringing science to people where they live, work, and lounge – to inspire curiosity and further exploration,” COSI describes the event.
The first three days of the festival took place at local community centers, libraries, schools, businesses, parks and even bars in order to reach a variety of learners.
The final Big Science Celebration took place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. with booths for nonprofits, community partners, local businesses and educational institutions including Batelle, Honda, CD 92.9 FM radio station and more.
CGIF, along members of the ACerS President’s Council of Student Advisors (PCSA) outreach committee, hosted an interactive booth with two live science experiments for families, teachers and young scientists to try. In celebration of the International Year of Glass, both experiments demonstrated the unique properties of glass.
The candy fiber pull showed the nature of fiber optics and a new experiment using water pods represented bioactive glass microbead encapsulation, which is typically used for drug delivery in pharmaceutical and medical industries.
This new experiment is currently under development by Dr. Casey Schwarz and her team at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. Dr. Schwarz is a professor of physics and materials scientist at Ursinus College and also works with outreach programs at middle and high schools.
CGIF continually strives to create innovative teaching resources to expand material science education in the community to attract the next generation of ceramic and glass professionals. If you would like to support CGIF, visit ceramics.org/donate.
