What you will need:

• Plastic Bag
• One Paper Plate
• Two Cotton Balls
• Tape
• Tissue Paper
• Glue
• Paint

Stage One:

Fill the plastic bag with tissue paper. Roll the bag up to a tube shape (as shown above). Tape the bag in shape.

Stage Two

Using the paper plate, draw and cut out four dragon feet shapes (as shown above)

Stage Three:

Using any color you choose, paint all of the dragon pieces.

Stage Four:

Glue the dragon feet into place and also glue the two cotton balls (dotted with paint) to make eyes.

Stage Five: Finished!

Once the paint is dry, your creation is complete!

Why don’t you try adding decoration to the dragons back, or add a nose!

• Now try using other materials instead of the plastic bag and tissue paper? How about bubble wrap instead? What about ping pong balls for eyes instead of the cotton balls?

With the welcome return of the Ready, Set, Roll exhibit, we thought that we should investigate how you could create your own working track from materials that can be found in your own home.

What you will need:

-Tubing for example: Toilet paper roll, wrapping paper tubes, insulation tubes

-A variety of balls (sizes and weights)

-Tape

Extras:

-Cups

-Books (used to raise height)

We had fun experimenting with different tubes to see how crazy our roller coaster could get! Check it out:

First we built a simple ramp (like a ski jump). The aim of this track is to allow the ball to pick up as much speed (acceleration) while it is traveling down the ramp and finally to land in one of the cups at the bottom.

From this we then tried the same ramp with different balls of different sizes and weights. Would the different sizes/ weights of the balls make a difference?

The image below shows a more advanced track, this time including a loop in the middle. In order to make it around the loop, your ball needs to gain enough velocity. What can you do to make sure your ball builds enough speed to conquer the Loop d’Loop?

To add an obstacle to your track, try adding a jump to see if your ball can make it across the gap.

For our jump, we used paper cups to hold up the track. Do you think you could make a wider gap for your roller coaster?

Finally, you can add a spiral cone to catch the ball in at the end of your track! It is very easy to make–Just draw a circle on a piece of paper, then either cut out a circle or have an adult do it for you. Next, you tape both of the sides together and add your finishing touch to the track!

You can make your roller coaster as long, loopy, or extreme as you want! See how adventurous you can get.

Once you’ve created your own coaster, you can try out ours at the Museum!

Architects of Air from the outside.

The interactive sculpture has been to over 35 countries and 2 million visitors have passed through the colored walls. The space inside Architects of Air is inflated with surprisingly quite fans. The beautiful and immersive colors are created by sunlight passing through colored panes of plastic (much like the light passing through colored panes of stained glass in a cathedral).

Sunlight passes through the colored strips in the ceiling of Architects of Air, making the whole sculpture light up in many colors.

Architects of Air is set up in the field near the Long Center through January 20th. Admission costs $8, kids 2 and under are free. We recommend getting their early (they open at 10am daily) – and bringing something to entertain your group in line.

Visitors explore the passages and chambers inside Architects of Air.

You can think of the ring around the moon like the Moon’s version of a rainbow. Rainbows appear when rays of sunlight are bent by water droplets in the Earth’s lower atmosphere (that’s why we see rainbows when it’s bright and wet). Rings around the moon are caused by rays of moonlight passing through clouds and ice crystals high up in the Earth’s atmosphere. You can learn a little more about Moon Rings over at Universe Today.

Hopefully it won’t be too cloudy out tonight to see the moon! The moon is supposed to rise tonight at 9:36pm – make sure to bundle up, it’s going to be cold! Leave us a comment with any moon observations.

A particularly impressive Moon Ring.

- Discovery News reports that a “Dinosaur Freeway” has been discovered in Colorado. The 98 million year-old highway consists of over 350 tracks from dinosaurs that traveled along what was then coastal plains. Read all about the discovery and how dinosaurs roamed by clicking this link.

A theropod dino foot from the exhibit.

- Across the pond in Germany, a prehistoric marine reptile from the order Ichthyosauria was found by a private collector looking for fossils alongside a (human) freeway construction site. German newspaper, the Local, describes the importance of the discovery – the newly unearthed reptile lived between 65 and 145 million years ago and up until its discovery, scientists had thought that the Ichthyosauria was extinct by then.

- The Smithsonian reports that long before the first paleontologist sat behind a desk studying fossils, mysterious tracks and bones were shaping folklore around the world. As recently as the 1950′s, villagers in small Chinese towns had traded stories about mythical birds and creatures that traveled near the villages and brought good luck. Read the full article to learn how these folktales help paleontologists make new discoveries. 

Come visit the dinosaurs before they become extinct!

- Biologists and engineers at UC Berkeley are learning a thing or two about balance from dinosaurs and modern lizards. The research team tested a hypothesis that theropod dinosaurs used their tails to stabilize themselves while they ran and leaped. Students created a robot, named Tailbot, that uses its tail to keep balance. Find pictures and more information by reading the full article.

- And we’ll close out our dinosaur news cast with a heartwarming human interest story… a 4 year-old Canadian girl has found some internet fame with a video where she analyzes the inaccuracies of a model dinosaur in a toy shop. Her video got special attention from the Canadian Museum of Nature who sent her a more anatomically correct dinosaur model. Watch Stella explain why the triceratops toy is anything but and read about her interest in science over at the Ottowa Citizen’s site.