Gifted Atlanta

Thanks to my friend, Jamie F., for pointing me to the “Geek Dad Day” article in Wired magazine with ideas for science projects you can do with your kids at home. Sample projects include:

• Build a motorized, drawing “art bot”
• Build a working hovercraft
• Measure the speed of light with chocolate

Just be sure to read the experiments carefully and provide adult supervision as necessary. Doesn’t seem like you’re going to want your middle-schooler building, say, a steam engine solo.

Looking for something to do with the kids when school lets out? Tellus Museum is offering a coupon for $2 off admission through the end of May.

The museum, located just off I-75 in Cartersville, includes a large rock and mineral gallery, a fossil gallery, and interactive exhibits. The museum’s newest exhibit features images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, to be on display through the summer and into fall.

Also new are the two current planetarium shows. “Planetary Thrill Rides” simulates roller coasters on other planets (expressly not recommended for anyone who’s prone to motion sickness); “When Venus Transits the Sun” looks at a celestial phenomenon that will take place June 5.

And if your child loves rocks and minerals, mark your calendar for Rockfest 2012, taking place at Tellus June 9-10.

The coupon is available through the Tellus Facebook page.

This Saturday,  May 19, people from Seattle to Senegal to Sydney will take part in Scratch Day, with events focused on Scratch, a beginner’s computer programming environment developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Locally, Scratch Day will be celebrated at Start:Code Learning Labs in the Toco Hill area of DeKalb County. From 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., guests can experiment with Scratch and see student projects developed using Scratch. Bring a laptop with you to participate in activities.

Georgia Perimeter College welcomes visitors to view the night sky in its Dunwoody campus observatory this Saturday, May 12, from 9 p.m. to 10:45 p.m. Arrive before 10 p.m. for viewing.

Can’t make it this weekend? Not a problem. The observatory holds open house hours on the second Saturday night of every month. The hours vary seasonally, based on when the skies become dark. GPC also allows visitors to use the observatory telescope at other times, by appointment.

If your child enjoys astronomy, a trip to  Tellus Museum for National Astronomy Day will offer a day full of opportunities to learn about space.

Astronomy Day at Tellus will be held from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, April 28, 2012. Highlights will include meteorite specimens — even some you can touch — stargazing tips from local astronomy clubs, solar astronomy, planetarium shows, stargazing via telescopes and the observatory, and nighttime guided tours of the stars.

All activities are included in the regular admission price (or free if you’re a Tellus member).

National Astronomy Day is next Saturday, April 28, and Fernbank Science Center in Decatur has planned a busy day of stargazing in the planetarium and the observatory.

Guests at Fernbank can view Venus in the observatory (weather permitting) and take in planetarium shows throughout the day. Admission to the science center, as always, is free, but there is a small fee for the planetarium shows — $4 for adults; $3 for kids.

An Ohio teen who loves science and wants to foster scientific exploration among high-school students is starting an academic research journal — and she’s looking for like-minded teens who want to join her.

En Kephalos Teen Science will give students a place to publish their scientific research. Founded by Anamika Veeramani, currently a sophomore in high school, the journal will be overseen by an advisory board of representatives from colleges, high schools and hospitals.

The journal is seeking candidates for several editor positions, as well as a marketing coordinator and a web designer. The deadline to apply for these positions is April 25, 2012.

The journal also is looking for research to publish. High-school students can submit articles about their original research, or reviews that summarize a body of research done by others.

For more information, contact Anamika.

Warm weather means fireflies should soon appear in our area. They’re amazing to watch, and for budding young scientists, they can be an opportunity to take part in a vast, nationwide study of the firefly population.

With the Museum of Science Firefly Watch, you and your kids can work as research scientists. And you don’t need any special training. If you can count lightning bugs, you can provide data that will help researchers evaluate how firefly populations are changing. It’s not a huge time commitment, either — just 10 minutes one evening a week during firefly season. You report your observations online, and you can see what data others have collected.

My kids and I participated last year, and it was easy and fun. Sign up now so you’ll be ready when the lightning bugs make their debut!

Today’s kids are voracious consumers of technology. But for some, consuming isn’t enough. They want to make the technology, too.

Those techno-curious kids are the target students for a new business called Start Code, which will begin teaching hands-on computer programming classes this month. Classes will focus on coding in Scratch, Java, Python, iOS and other current technologies. Students in grades 6-12 can enroll in Wednesday afternoon or Saturday classes.

All classes will be held at the Toco Hill shopping center. (For those of you who didn’t grow up in my old ‘hood, that’s in northeast Atlanta, just north of Decatur.)

Registration is open now. Classes start April 21, 2012.

Fernbank Science Center in Decatur will host its next Science Night Out on Friday, April 20. Jack Jones, inventor of the Geobat, a flying machine shaped like a ring, will talk to students about the engineering design process.

Science Night Out is aimed at science lovers in 3rd – 6th grades. The program runs from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Registration, which is done only by U.S. Mail, is $15 for one child and $10 for additional siblings. The class will be filled on a first come, first served basis.