MosSE Reservation Tour

Days 27, 28, and 29

2009-06-07T18:51:00.000-06:00

The last three days have been a blur! First off, on Thursday we toured the science wing of Chief Dull Knife College before heading over to the elementary school with volunteer college students. The protégés of Bob Madsen, science professor extraordinaire, helped us set up before hanging their own shining research posters in the gym for the community to see. They’ve been hard at work developing a cheap water filter made of a mix of zeolite and cement, which filters out virtually all bacteria and viruses, rendering potable water. They were eager to practice explaining their research on us before they take it to the TCUP convention in DC this week!

The next morning we opened to the Lame Deer community, home of the Northern Cheyenne Indians. About 65 children and families came to check out this new and different activity called hands-on science. They loved it! It becomes more and more apparent that isolated rural and tribal communities are eager to enjoy and explore the healthy and stimulating atmosphere of the mobile science center called MosSE, Montana spectrUM Science Experience.

Another day in Lame Deer provided us with the delight of answering and asking interesting questions of our visitors, modeling and playing together with families, witnessing the power and presence of local community volunteer support and engagement, and of squealing with utter delight all over again at the crashing of KEVA planks to the floor.

Oh, and Matt may take a physical sciences teaching position at Chief Dull Knife College this fall, go Matt!

Day 24

2009-06-01T19:40:00.000-06:00

Today we set up in Crow Agency, on the Crow Reservation, the Apsaalooke Nation. The two symbols above the pipe are a medicine bag and a sweat lodge.

A few families visited us today, as well as the Bighorn County News, and a class of adult students learning about heavy equipment. Their instructor, Dan, led his students through the exhibits explaining many practical applications of the science involved.

For instance, iron filings are used in identifying cracks in big engine blocks. The area with the possible crack is magnetized and iron filings are dropped on it and instead of filling the crack, they are repelled by the crack and instead line up along the crack, making it visible.

Today we proved that adults just as well as kids can have fun and learn from fun hands-on science! It was also a gift to discover another science enthusiast and impromptu educator. Thanks Dan.

Day 20

2009-05-28T23:13:00.005-06:00

Had a fantastic day today! During the morning, field trips of 1st through 3rd graders in groups of about 60 kids came up from Southside Elementary, and during the afternoon the 4th, 5th and 6th graders from Northside explored with the exhibits. We also had three groups from the highschool visit, and everyone seemed to have a great time. Some of the teachers mentioned how great it was to have something both fun and educational to capture the kids’ attention on the second-to-last day of school.

We made a great friend, the school district nurse Angie, who helped us out immensely with rounding up volunteers, feeding us dinner, and providing a caravan service for kids who didn’t have rides in to the Family Science Night. Angie also found out that it was possible to make liquid nitrogen ice cream, and decided that she could provide the makings for it. She bought milk, cream, sugar and flavoring, and two helpings of root beer-flavored stick-to-your-tongue ice cream made the night a huge hit! Thanks Angie!

We also learned something new about the uses for liquid nitrogen when a teacher told us that she used it to brand her horses, since it was less painful to the animals and safer. Learn something new every day!

Day 19

2009-05-27T16:55:00.004-06:00

On the road again, driving from where we spent the night in Malta to Northside Elementary in Wolf Point. The cursed milk bottle was disposed of with great ceremony this morning at the motel, but we won’t be able to determine the effects for a few days at least. Matt took a little time to stop by the two dinosaur museums in Malta on our way out of town, but didn’t get enough time there and is determined to make it back soon.

We set up in the gym at Northside with the assistance of several kids recruited from the highschool, and wandered off to find housing and meet Matt’s parents for dinner.

Day 18

2009-05-26T21:27:00.001-06:00

School groups from the Hays-Lodgepole area (from the southern part of the reservation) came up to see us today, with kids ranging in age from kindergartners to 8th graders. Many of the local kids from yesterday came back to see us again, and brought more of their family members with them.

One of the professors at the college thanked us for bringing the exhibits in and for interacting with the kids. He told us of his concerns for science education on the reservation, which is apparently being curtailed by the rules laid down by the No Child Left Behind Act. Time and money are being taken away from teaching science and are being redirected toward other subjects, and he’s worried about the effects that will have on the kids’ overall education.

We closed up in the late afternoon, and a couple of the local kids stuck around to help us clean. While Matt and Emily were loading one of the exhibits, Emily’s finger got mashed pretty badly. Fortunately it doesn’t appear to be broken, but for a while until it heals we are going to have to hope we have volunteers who can help us with the heavy lifting.

Today was also a day of strange happenings, with random mishaps like misbehaving and leaky exhibits. Thanks to a scientific process of elimination, we decided that the fault lay with an empty milk bottle that we’ve been carrying around (we intended to recycle it, then forgot). We think it’s now full of bad luck. Tomorrow we will find away to properly dispose of it, possibly involving ritual sacrifice. We’ll let you know if it works.

Day 17

2009-05-25T18:42:00.003-06:00

Happy Memorial Day!

We pulled into Fort Belknap College this morning a little before 8:00 am, and backed the U-Haul up to the Little River Learning Lodge. The town of Fort Belknap is located on the far north-western corner of the Fort Belknap Reservation, home to the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes. We were visited throughout the day by several kids and a few families looking for something to do on this holiday. A few of the kids elected to spend almost the entire day with us, exploring and experimenting with the exhibits, enjoying liquid nitrogen Cheetos, and investigating the physics of superballs.

Aeolian Landscape is drawing some interesting reactions from kids out on this side of the Rocky Mountains: many of them at first take the fine sand inside to be snow, because they have seen snow move like the sand in the exhibit first hand almost every winter.

We also noticed that the kids were really interested in a lot of the pictures and posters up on the walls of the college: Many of the pictures depict members of the local community who have gotten degrees at the college and gone far in the community, while the posters cover current research on everything from human health to local wildlife and resources.

Day 15

2009-05-24T18:26:00.009-06:00

Today was a full day of edification on our way to Fort Belknap College, where we’re staying just north in Harlem. Our first appointment was with a Mrs. Anna Brumley, tour manager of the Wahkpa Chu’gn Buffalo Jump, just behind the mall in Havre. The jump is a spot along the Milk River where several generations of tribes drove small herds of bison over the edge of the cliff and into a corralled area to make them easier to hunt. We stopped along the trail at several points to examine archeological digs of layers beneath the jump. We both tried our hand at the atlatl, a device hunters used to increase thrust of a spear between 20-40%, with reported accuracy at 90 meters (not us of course).

On the way to Harlem, we detoured south on 240 from Chinook to the Bears Paw Battleground, Nez Perce National Historic Park. This is the sight where 400 US soldiers ambushed the Nez Perce just 40 miles from the Canadian border, where they sought freedom. The Nez Perce had journeyed over a thousand miles and stopped to rest in late September in a low creek valley with shelter from the wind, water to drink, and buffalo nearby. The initial U.S. attack turned into six days of siege, after which the Nez Perce leader, Chief Joseph, his people frozen and starving, uttered his famous speech, which included these words; “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” People have left personal belongings at the grave markers. It was a solemn and reflective walk.

On our way back through Chinook we were dismayed to learn that the new Wildlife Museum was closed so we drove around the corner to photograph a statue of Mr. C.M. Russel, and asked some men working on a sign what to do in Chinook. When we mentioned we were traveling with science exhibits, one of the men offered to take us on a tour of the very museum we had just missed; he does the drywall and framing for the museum and often gives tours. This museum features many wildlife specimens and a most exciting rendition of a buffalo jump!
Tomorrow, Fort Belknap College!

Day 14

2009-05-22T19:32:00.006-06:00

Last night at Evergreen Campground was chilly, but the day turned sunny and warm. Today we drove 40 miles to Fort Belknap Communty College to post flyers, check out our set-up spot for Monday and Tuesday, and look for lodging close by. Unfortunately the only hotel in the area is up for sale, but we found that bicycle campers have a special allowance to camp on the lawn of the Harlem Town Hall and we could do the same. Robin, a lovely lady who told us about rescuing a mouse from the swimming pool behind Town Hall, told us also to check about lodging with a lady on the edge of town. She rents out two apartments in her big old farm house. We'll be staying there Sunday and Monday night so we're close to the college. In the meantime, we're headed back to Evergreen and Havre for a couple more nights of camping. Ooh, we found a malt shop in Chinook and enjoyed a cool treat on this warm spring day.

Day 13

2009-05-21T21:39:00.007-06:00

Excitement today as we’re closing in on Havre! We stopped to take pictures of this lovely old school house and as we approached to peer in the windows we had quite a surprise. Matt heard something hit a piece of wood next to him and looked down and shouted, “snake!” It took a me a second to register his concern, just in time to step away from the rattling snake. She had struck the wood next to Matt’s leg and was recoiling to strike again as he jumped out of reach. She had been happily sunning herself there camouflaged against the old wood and rocks and she was quite perturbed at our appearance. Her rattle became louder as we gawked, trying to get some good pictures, and she rattled herself right down into a crack under the old school-her territory now.

Recovering from the adrenaline rush and working out our story, we drove to a nice campground to set up camp. Evergreen campground is located a few miles southwest of Havre on a nice wooded family farm, an oasis on the dry and windswept plains.

We made it into Havre just in time for the last underground tour of the day. What a fascinating collection of donated and acquired items depicting life in the last centuries in the west! One of my favorite items was a cream separator. Our tour guide said every farm with a cow had one. He remembers they’d separate the milk everyday and save the cream for Saturdays when they’d churn it into butter. Yum!

One of Matt’s favorite areas was the old pharmacy, where you could get a vast variety of drugs and elixirs for almost anything that might ail you, including good ol’ snakeoil! No, he doesn’t harbor any bad feelings toward that snake from the schoolhouse – that’s really what they called the stuff!

Day 11

2009-05-19T13:11:00.006-06:00

Today we headed off in search of an internet connection so we could update this blog and check our connections with the next several stops.

We found the Sportsclub on Main (try the Wicked Burger and the Barnyard Burger) and ran into Hob, who used to cook for the Union Club, one of Emily's favorites, in Missoula.

Day 10

2009-05-18T12:45:00.000-06:00

We walked next door for breakfast this morning - pancakes, sausage, eggs, and the all-important coffee - served by mom and dad, both teachers at Shelby high school. Tired teens joined us at the breakfast table.
Today we hosted about 360 kids in four big groups throughout
the day. Several students from the high school volunteered their day to help us out, working with the kids at the exhibits, asking and answering questions, and helping Matt with the liquid nitrogen demos. Matt got an extra surprise when a balloon xploded prematurely during one demo, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it, and, hey, the show must go on, right?
Lauri requested a substitute teacher for the day for her own class so she could volunteer with us. She gathered a group around the Sea of Clouds exhibit to blow on the fog together, a great plume resulting!

We feasted on hot-lunch burritos with the kids in the lunchroom, having fun enticing kids who had not been in to see the exhibits yet and chuckling with those who'd already been through. Matt's neighbor at the lunch table lost her tooth in her burrito and couldn't wait to get it home to present to the tooth fairy.

Day 9

2009-05-17T12:28:00.009-06:00

We camped at a little reservoir on the edge of Shelby last night. After taco soup and couscous goulash, Emily's tent blew over, and Matt found out that the drain pipe for the dam spillway had a really cool echo effect.

The evening was positively balmy, and this morning would have been shorts and t-shirt weather if not for the wind. We located a laundromat, and Emily washed her tent. Drying it was highly entertaining, and automatic.

Our contact, Lauri Tokerud, recruited friends and high school students to help us unload at Shelby Elementary. Then we were given a place to stay in a house where the regular occupants are out of town. Tomorrow the high school volunteers will help us with school groups during the day and parent volunteers and teachers will help with the Family Science Night in the evening.

Day 8

2009-05-16T15:10:00.011-06:00

Welcome to Shelby! The Rockies have faded to the west, and we are now surrounded by plains, the occasional butte, and fields of wind turbines. We passed a big set of them along Highway 2; Matt counted 74, and thinks there were probably more.

So far we've been taking it easy, talking to a couple of nice folks at the Chamber of Commerce information building, meeting two very nice hound dogs and a friendly black lab puppy, buying a bag of balloons (Matt goes through one every time he does a liquid nitrogen demo), and finding a place to camp for the night. We also have run into a place selling the best pulled pork barbecue sandwiches either of us have ever tasted. Other than all that, we found the public library so we could post to this blog, and we are on the hunt for a laundromat.

Shelby, like a lot of towns up here, is on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad line, and there is a possibility that next year MosSE will be making this trip via train.

Tomorrow we will be unloading and setting up at the elementary school, and it's supposed to be in the high seventies or mid-eighties temperature-wise. We're going to go set up camp by the dam and relax!

Day 7

2009-05-15T21:30:00.004-06:00

Has it really been a week already? Today was partly cloudy and beautiful, with the snow-capped Rockies making a grand view to the west of Browning. A wide variety of school groups visited the exhibits at the college throughout the day, approximately 320 kids today. High school students from the alternative high school made a great contribution by researching weather concepts ahead of time and then helping a group of first graders engage with the exhibits. One young woman had written a paper about the color of clouds and she loved greeting and engaging the first graders as they ooohed and ahhhed over the lovely white vapor spilling over the sides of the giant bowl of Sea of Clouds.

We said goodbye to Mike and the other volunteers. Our experience in Browning has been a wonderful. We’ve met great people and made many contacts for next year’s MosSE Reservation Tour. We’re spreading the word about spectrUM’s commitment to bringing hands-on science to all Montanans.

Tomorrow, we’ll MosSE down the road to Shelby for a day of field trips and a Family Science Night.

Day 6

2009-05-14T21:47:00.002-06:00

This morning we started the day with 120 7th graders who normally have a field science day up at St. Mary’s but the weather has been too unpredictable. They were excited to be able to do something fun with science and we spent two hours with them, the exhibits, a liquid nitrogen demo, and a question and answer period. That group was followed by 4th, 5th, 6th, and 2nd graders throughout the day. Today 374 children from Browning visited spectrUM’s traveling MosSE exhibition.

There was a strong wind blowing off the mountains and across the plains. Clouds hid the mountains, which one of the volunteers at BCC told us usually means stormy weather for Browning.

Favorite quote of the day, regarding Aeolian Landscape, our sand dune in a microcosm exhibit: “I wish I was a little man and I could get in there and feel that wind.”

Our Family Science Night drew 93 family members who absolutely loved Matt’s Liquid Nitrogen Demos. One little boy had an especially contagious laugh and when the kids drew Dragon’s Breath from the liquid nitrogen drenched Cheetos, he would laugh so hard the whole group got to chuckling.

Day 5

2009-05-13T20:13:00.003-06:00

With batteries recharged and armed with Crawford-style caffeine, we headed up Highway 2 to Marias Pass on our way to Browning. Fortunately, the weather report was a bit on the pessimistic side, and we were greeted at the pass with dry roads, beautiful views, and light winds, (great for cleaning peanut shells out of our cab).

We unloaded and set up at the Blackfeet Community College Student Commons with the help of several volunteers arranged by BCC Researcher Mike McKay, and procured a classroom nearby to use for liquid nitrogen demos. The Commons is in the center of the campus here and a short walk from elementary schools nearby who will be visiting us in the next two days.

The sky is huge here and the weather often severe, but today the wind feels soothing and cleansing. The view to the west of Browning is a full panorama of the Rocky Mountain Front, and to the east the Great Plains roll away.

We shared dinner with one of the volunteers at a local favorite restaurant, The Junction, and swapped stories. Later he brought pvc cement to us to help us fix Sea of Clouds, which was enthusiastically cranked on back at SKC, resulting in a cracked pipe.

Day 4

2009-05-12T22:00:00.006-06:00

It's our last day here at SKC, and we’re going to miss this place. We said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, and headed to the Activity Center for today’s three field trips, 6th and 7th grades from Ronan and Ronan Mountain Heights Christian School. All three fieldtrips were long, so we ran a liquid nitrogen demo for each in addition to exploring the exhibits. The students seemed to get quite a bit out of the Bernoulli Bag, which is a two-meter long plastic tube sealed at one end. The idea is to see how many breaths it takes to fill the bag full of air. Depending on your size and perseverance, it can take anywhere between ten and fifty breaths to fill the bag … unless you know the “trick.” If you don’t block the end of the tube with your face, instead blowing from about ten inches back, you can actually fill the bag with only one or two breaths! Why? According to the folks at Steve Spangler Science, “In 1738, Daniel Bernoulli observed that a fast moving stream of air is surrounded by an area of low atmospheric pressure. In fact, the faster the stream of air moves, the more the air pressure drops around the moving air. When you blow into the bag, higher pressure air in the atmosphere forces its way into the area of low pressure created by the stream of air from your lungs. In other words, air in the atmosphere is drawn into the long bag at the same time that you are blowing into the bag.” (http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000062). Check it out!

After the last field trip, we loaded the Uhaul with the help of several volunteers from SKC staff and faculty, which was a great help.

Our next stop is Browning on the Blackfeet Reservation and we’ll drive over Marias Pass on Highway 2. The weather has been getting hairier all day, with gusting winds and occasional snow, and expecting more, so we’ll stay the night at Emily’s parents’ house in Kalispell, before driving over the divide tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Browning!

Day 3

2009-05-11T20:09:00.001-06:00

Today was a good day to discuss weather: fog, driving rain, wind, a little hail, some lightning thrown in for good measure, and a few beautiful flashes from the sun during the afternoon. Inside the Health and Activity Center, 435 kids from 8 local schools visited SKC to explore our activities and exhibits. We hosted school groups from St. Ignatius, Pablo, Ronan, Polson, Mission Valley Christian Academy and Two Eagle River School in Pablo. Ages ranged from kindergarten to high school with one group partnering younger and older kids for an integrated science learning experience.

We walked the grounds and gardens of our host family and decided certain things should make the blog: water walls: celled walls filled with water that surround tomato plants, sheltering the early sprouts from potential spring freeze; lama poop used to fertilize the gardens (they do have three stomachs); sprigs of asparagus and rhubarb; apricot trees that need each other to cross-pollinate; a quaking aspen; many apple trees for cider to last throughout the year. Ahh, the science of agriculture tastes so good!

Day 2

2009-05-10T08:07:00.001-06:00

Woke up this morning to sunrise over the Mission Mountains on what promised to be a beautiful day. By nine the sun was slightly buried as a few, rain filled, clouds tried to force their way eastward, up over the Missions. This gorgeous Mother’s Day in the Missions turned out to be a special day to engage with several families who spent hours with the exhibits. It’s great to watch children in wonder at the world and its fascinating phenomena and to watch adults rediscover this wonder and curiosity about the world again, aided by the joys and squeals of the whole family.

After we closed for the day Emily’s parents joined us and our hosts guided us all on a hike along the Flathead River, highlighting several features that geologists interpret as evidence of old Glacial Lake Missoula. During the last ice age, a great ice dam blocked off the Clark Fork River several times around northern Idaho, forcing the river and its tributaries to back up and fill their valleys in a massive lake. Every now and then (several to several dozen times over the next few thousand years, no one is really sure how many times), the ice dam would break and all of Glacial Lake Missoula would drain out in a torrent through the gap in a few hours. This, of course, left some impressive scars on the landscape, which can still be seen today.

Day 1

2009-05-09T16:30:00.002-06:00

(1:00 pm) Today is go-day. Final checks have been made, straps holding the exhibits in the U-Haul tightened, checklists printed, breakfast devoured, and we are headed north on Highway 93. For the next three days we will be working from the gym at the Salish-Kootenai Tribal College in Pablo, Montana.

(3:00 pm) Arrived in Pablo, which is in the heart of the Flathead Indian Reservation and the scenic Mission Valley. The gym is in the new (and beautiful) Joe McDonald Health and Activity Center, and we spent the next four hours setting up the exhibits inside. For the next three nights we will be staying with a host family in nearby Ronan.

2009-05-08T07:58:00.004-06:00

MosSE? What’s that?
It’s Montana spectrUM Science Experience, a mobile science center.
It’s pronounced like mosey, and we’re moseying around the state of Montana.

Hello and welcome to our MosSE Blog, spectrUM Discovery Area’s outreach education travel journal! MosSE transports hands-on science for kids of all ages around the state of Montana. These fun and engaging exhibits and activities have themes like Motion or Weather. We load these exhibits and activities into a trailer and drive them out to communities all around Montana, which is what you’ll be reading about here!

This time we’re moseying (ha, ha) in a grand tour around the state, visiting Montana’s seven great Indian reservations (See Map). Most of the exhibits revolve around weather science, or meteorology, and feature some of the exquisite Weather Exhibition visiting Montana this year from the San Francisco Exploratorium. We’re able to travel these exhibits out to rural and tribal Montana thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR).

The Exhibits
First up, from the Weather collection of the San Francisco Exploratorium: Sea of Clouds, a huge bowl of fog that allows visitors to observe how air currents created by the wakes from passing bodies, and turbulence effect the patterns of movement in the fog. Convection Cells is a large disc of fluid that moves in strange patterns when heated by a hidden lamp, a mesmerizing exhibit. Aeolian Landscape is a basin of sand being shifted around by a visitor-controlled fan. We like to think of it as wind erosion in hyper-speed. Bubbles, always a favorite, is a large – you guessed it – bubble tray! Kids and adults can try different frame types and experiment with stretching surface tension!

In addition to the Weather exhibits is Gravity Well, a large fiberglass maelstrom that swallows coins and marbles, and Radar Magnets, a pair of war surplus gap magnets, which kids cover in nuts, bolts, washers, and black sand. Activities include Tornado Tubes, Cartesian Divers, a Bernoulli Bag, Cloud in a Bottle, and a really fun liquid nitrogen show! (Matt Haacker rocks!)

The Staff
The MosSE crew this trip consists of two intrepid explorers and educators (and bloggers), Emily Crawford and Matt Haacker. We’re here to see new things, meet new people, and have fun helping people learn about science.

So, check the map, check the dates, and hopefully you can stop by and learn with us!