Hermione’s Mayhem of Mazes Week 1 Guest Speakers

The week started out with Amy Griffin and Hilary Keenan of the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab who visited campers to explain the world of forensic science. Amy and Hilary specialize in identifying latent prints and using the AFIS fingerprint processing system. They explained the jobs of the many departments within the DPS Crime Lab and how they all work together to solve a crime. Amy and Hilary also gave the campers their own Camp Hermione ID cards to place their finger prints on, and helped the girls determine whether their print was an arch, loop, or whorl. 

On Wednesday, speakers from Cerilliant came and gave campers a potions class with magical, yet real, chemistry. The girls learned to distinguish a chemical reaction and a physical change. Campers also learned about different types of luminescence, specifically chemiluminescence, which produces light without producing heat. They saw this in action as they created luminol with help from the Cerilliant team.

 

Finally, Robyn, Emily, and Megan from Signature Science showed the campers how to transform everyday materials into a chemistry experiment! Simply by combining Elmer’s glue and Borax, the girls produced silly putty. Silly putty is a polymer — the most common polymer we use is plastic. Robyn also demonstrated to the girls how to create fake snow with sodium polyacrylate which is commonly found in diapers.

 

Thank you to all our guest speakers this week for explaining the science behind the magic!