Cambridge Science Festival
Many cities have Art or Music Festivals; Cambridge Massachusetts has a Science Festival each spring during the week that school kids are on spring vacation. With two major research universities, MIT and Harvard, this city of 105,000 has a lot of science to celebrate. Arriving on Day 4 of the ten-day festival, I found childcare made easy–a list of 200 activities for adults and children to do together. Violet and Lilli had already been to the Cambridge Rindge Latin School Carnival and snared this brain hat to put together. They had also been practicing songs about biodiversity to sing with the North Cambridge Family Opera. Violet had even helped write a mini-opera that would be performed on April 21 and 22.
First stop on Day 5 was the MIT Museum for Chain Reaction FUNstruction. Violet put together her own contraption and enjoyed seeing it work.
After looking at many interesting exhibits in the museum and climbing the musical stairs, we shared a burger at “Miracle of Science,” where the menu looks like the periodic table of the elements. I told her that eight years ago at this restaurant, she had taken a nap in her baby carriage. We missed a scheduled Modular Origami Workshop, but stopped by the venue, Albertine Press, owned by the mother of one of her fellow Girl Scouts, and bought a book of origami instructions to use the colorful papers I had brought from Florida.
On Day 6, we took the T to the Museum of Fine Arts, where we celebrated the A in S.T.E.A.M (science, technology, engineering, art, and math). Staff members were on hand to assist students in special projects. Inspired by a picture of a conqueror in the museum, Violet made a sword and shield, while I decorated a crown. After lunch she viewed Greek vases decorated with Athena and her pet owl (symbol of wisdom) and drew her own picture of an owl.
On rainy Day 7 of the Festival, neighbors Clare and Declan Lewis joined us to “Meet a Scientist” at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. See this album for several pictures of the scientists they met there and other photos taken throughout the week. The kids were particularly interested in the stuffed animals on display, in finding their birthstones, and in selecting a memento from the gift shop. Clare and I brought home an “owl to grow,” continuing the “wisdom” theme of the week.
On Friday, Day 8. we met a real Harvard scientist: Ryan Loomis, friend of my former student Diana Fang, who had just completed his PhD thesis at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. We all had dinner at Flatbreads. Ryan’s thesis was “on the physical and chemical processes which govern the star formation process in our Galaxy, complemented by extensive work on algorithmic improvements to radio astronomical imaging and information extraction.” For the next three years he will be a Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Laboratory in Charlottesville VA. He told us that Diana, who is getting her Masters in Architecture at the University of Michigan this month, has a job with an architecture firm in Charlottesville. So happy for these two wonderful young people.
Day 9 dawned sunny and bright. We three took a walk toward Spy Pond, marveling at blooming flowers and singing birds. For lunch we met Cleta Booth, a friend of mine from Rice, at B. Good in Harvard Square. After a walk through Harvard Yard to the Cambridge Public Library, she and I attended the North Cambridge Family Opera concert, Web of Life: from Aardvark to Zinnia, Songs about Biodiversity, in which Lilli and Violet and several of their friends sang. I was so proud of them for learning difficult songs about “extremophiles” and “convergent evolution” and presenting them with lively animation. My favorite line from the song Lake was “in the blink of eternity’s eye.” At last, I had an inkling of evolution’s timeframe. I was particularly proud of Violet for performing well in the mini-opera about saving rain forests that she had helped write.
Sunday, Day 10, was the most fun of all: Cambridge Explores the Universe (no less) at the Harvard Smithsonian Center our Astrophysics on Garden Street, where Ryan had worked the last five years. It was the best organized and most compelling of all the venues–lots of exploration stations and many helpful scientists and enthusiastic graduate students brought great pleasure to this stargazer and her family. Wow! Here are some images; more are here.
In the afternoon, another concert by the Family Opera, even better this time, followed by a party at the lovely home of Artistic Director David Bass and Producer Sue Hall, complete with trampoline for the kids. We celebrated the end of the Science Festival with friends Lauren Burrows and her boyfriend Andrew at Summer Shack. Though there were many intriguing events we had no time for, we loved what we did and learned a lot. I hope to come back for next year’s Cambridge Science Festival!
On May 12, I wrote to Caroline Nolan and Helen Wang, pictured above at the Center for Astrophysics, to thank them: “On April 22 you warmly welcomed my granddaughter, my daughter and me to your wonderful Center for Astrophysics. Thank you for telling us about your work, providing the dodecahedron to assemble, and recommending Dava Sobel’s The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. I’m enjoying the book tremendously. How honored you must feel to work in an institution that has nurtured women scientists for over a hundred years! I wrote up my impressions of the Cambridge Science Festival at https://mksconbrio.com/art/cambridge-science-festival/. Scroll to Day 10, if you’re in a hurry. Please extend our thanks to all who participated that day—yours was the best part of the Festival for us.” Martha Smith, Boynton Beach FL
Caroline answered promptly: “Hi Martha, I’m really glad you enjoyed yourself at the Festival. It is a lot of fun to participate as a scientist too! Also glad to hear you are enjoying the book. The story of the women here has also been made into a play: “Silent Sky”, in which you might be interested if you ever come across it. Best wishes, Caroline”
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