Mad Scientists

Got to hang out with the mad scientists of Assumption Middle School tonight for their science fair! Lots of interesting experiments and demonstrations crammed together in overheated classrooms. But cool to see.

Carter was inspired by some "Brain Games" on the National Geographic Channel and he created an interactive display from that.

If you look at the gray boxes, does one look darker than the other? They are actually the exact same shade of gray. Don't believe me? Put your finger over the line between them and you will see.

Pretty cool, huh?

He also demonstrated the Stroop Effect, which has to do with how quickly your brain recognizes words versus colors. Participants were timed identifying colors on a flash card when the words matched the ink: Blue, Red, Green, etc. They were then timed when the colors didn't match the words -- Blue, Red, Green -- and found the brain took longer to figure out the color because it wanted to say the word instead of the color. Make sense?

He did pretty well from what we (and our spies) could see. Plus, his board looked magnificent! Thanks to my Cricut cutting out the letters. Ha. Carter was the one who lined everything up like a perfectionist, though.

I thought mad scientists were messy...