July 2016 - High Touch High Tech

Asheville Camp is “Out of this World”!

Kids at the High Touch High Tech summer science camp at Emmanuel Lutheran School did hands-on activities related to science, technology, engineering and math last week (STEM)!

These students participated in a week long science camp during the week of July 18, 2016 to July 22, 2016. They did programs that went over science topics including solar light, experimenting with polymers, some ‘Kitchen Chemistry’, launched rockets with ‘Flight Command’, and learned about Earth phenomena in our ‘Funomena’ program!

Check out the video: https://youtu.be/iV98-ayPgzA

Campers in Connecticut Discover Science!

Check out the article below about our summer science camp programming at our Connecticut location:

Campers under the direction of High Touch High Tech’s Chris Stetson spent the week of June 27 to July 1 learning about science topics and completing activities and experiments of their own.

The Science Discoveries camp was offered through Newtown Parks and Recreation. High Touch High Tech of Weston provides science-related preschool programs, after school programs, summer camp programs, mini camps, and birthday parties, according to its website.

“I like science camp a lot,” said Alexa Manfredonia, and a number of campers playing with her outside during a recess break on Wednesday, June 29, agreed.

“It’s pretty fun, because we get to try new things and stuff,” said Jules Battaglia.

Mr Stetson said the camp covered general science topics. Each day of the week had a different theme to study and conduct activities around. According to Mr Stetson, Monday was a chemistry day; the campers studied dinosaurs on Tuesday; Wednesday was light and sound day; Thursday was flight and space day; and Friday was a planned day to finish the volcanoes the campers were working on throughout the week.

“I really love it,” said Christopher Rice. “We are even making out own mini-volcanoes that we are going to explode at the end of this week.”

After Mr Stetson led the campers back inside Hawley Elementary School, where the camp was held, he explained what they could expect for the rest of the day.

“We are talking about light and sound today,” Mr Stetson said. “Both are forms of energy.”

Mr Stetson demonstrated how a piece of paper with the image of a cowboy on one side and the image of a horse on the other appears to have the cowboy riding the horse when flipped fast, by attaching strings and twirling the paper.

“We only see what light goes into our eye,” said Mr Stetson.

After Mr Stetson handed out diffraction glasses, which he explained splits light up, Andrew Sposato quickly put his pair on.

“Rainbows,” Andrew said, describing what he saw through the glasses, “rainbows, really, next to the light.”

More information about Newtown Parks & Recreation’s summer camps offerings is available at parks.newtown-ct.gov or call 203-270-4340, and more information about High Touch High Tech is available sciencemadefun.net or 828-684-3192.

Source: http://newtownbee.com/campers-discover-science/

Think About It Thursday: What’s Are Floater’s?

Sometimes, against a bright background such as a clear sky or a blank computer screen, you might see things floating across your field of vision. What are these moving objects, and how are you seeing them?

Perhaps you aren’t seeing these floaters when looking into the bright sky but instead are seeing tiny dots of light? Well these little flashes of light are known as Blue Field Entoptic Phenomenon. These moving dots are actually white blood cells in your eyes. They are flowing in the capillaries in front of your eye’s retina.

These blood cells can’t absorb the bright blue light, which creates gaps in the blood column. Later these gaps appear like elongated moving bright dots to your eye sight. This disorder is also called “Scheerer’s phenomenon”. It’s not dangerous at all and is in fact very common, but most people don’t even notice it if they’re not paying attention to it. You’ve probably experienced it numerous times without realizing.

Michael Mauser explains the visual phenomenon that is floaters and Blue Field Entoptic Phenomenon in this Ted Talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6e_m9iq-4Q

HTHT Welcomes Our Newest Franchise in Nigeria!

High Touch High Tech is pleased to announce our newest Franchise location in Nigeria. Omobolanle Olukayode and Oluwafunmbi Adebayo traveled to Asheville, NC during the week of June 27th – July 1st, 2016 to complete their franchise training.

Please join us in welcoming Bola and her team to the High Touch High Tech Family!

The Science of Moonbows

Moonbow_-_geograph.org.uk_-_279454 — Dumgoyach, via Wikimedia Commons

With National Moon Day approaching on July 20^th and the Anniversary of the Apollo 11’s first landing on the Moon, we felt it appropriate to feature the science of moonbows in this month’s newsletter.

A moonbow is also commonly referred to as a lunar rainbow. A moonbow is a rare natural atmospheric phenomena that occurs when the Moon’s light is reflected and refracted off water droplets in the air.

Moonbows are much fainter than rainbows made by the sun and often appear to be white. This is due to the smaller amount of light reflected from the surface of the moon. The light from the moon is usually too faint to be perceived by the receptors in the human eye, it is difficult for the human eye to discern colors in a moonbow. However, the colors in a moonbow do appear in long exposure photographs.

A bright moon near to its brightest phase known as a full moon is needed in order to have a chance at seeing a moonbow. It must be also be raining opposite the moon, the sky must be dark and the moon must be very low in the sky (about 42º above the horizon). All these put together makes seeing a moonbow very special and rare!

There are some locations around the world where moonbows occur more frequently. Most of these locations tend to have waterfalls, which create layers of mist in the air. Some of these locations include Yosemite National Park in California and Cumberland Falls State Resort Park in Kentucky. Victoria Falls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe and Waimea in Hawaii.