Past Events

Through a Rotary mini-grant, Quest engaged students at Del Valle High School with activities to understand ways to lower energy bills and help the environment. They discovered how heat moves around (radiation, convection, and conduction) and how insulation works.  They built calorimeters using insulating materials and used an infrared thermometer which showed that black objects lose heat faster than shiny aluminum objects. Real tools. Real science. Real-world skills!

Lectures and Workshops for Lifelong Learners

• Sponsored the Rae Dorough Speaker Series talk by Jamie Metzl entitled “Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity,” which explored societal impacts of this rapidly advancing technology
• Conducted a Growth Mindset Workshop for college freshmen in the Innovation Tri-Valley Boomerang program to explore learning styles, how the brain changes during learning, embracing failure, and cultivating a growth mindset
• Delivered numerous presentations about our activities and plans at the Rotary Club of Livermore Valley, Tri-Valley Evening Rotary Club, and the Valley Study Group

For Middle School and High School Students and Educators

• Provided judges and a science experiment about measuring porosity by adding water to beds of marbles of different sizes for the Livermore Science Odyssey at Junction Avenue School
• Deployed our vertical wind tunnel at Oak Grove Middle School in Concord and Del Valle High School in Livermore to teach the principles of force balance and the methods of scientific investigation
• Demonstrated the forces of gravity and wind resistance to lower elementary students at the Safari Kid Summer Camp in Danville

For Everyone at Any Age

• Introduced our vertical wind tunnel interactive exhibit at a Boy Scout fundraising event at the Bankhead Theater
• Conducted interactive exhibits at the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center’s Innovation Fair to demonstrate water movement through sand and gravel and how it relates to water storage in the Tri-Valley, and a wind tunnel to show aerodynamic drag forces
• Fielded our water and wind interactive exhibits at the Innovation Fair at the Summer Fest Celebration held at the Livermore Public Library
• Deployed our wind tunnel and vacuum drop interactive exhibits at a joint Super Saturday event with the Valley Children’s Museum in Dublin in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing
• Created a 38-ft long scale model display of the Apollo 11 mission trajectory to hang in the lobby of the Bankhead Theater as part of a two-month exhibit about the Apollo Program Moon Landings, in addition to replication of the Apollo 15 vacuum drop experiment at one of the associated receptions
• Deployed our wind tunnel, vacuum drop, water percolation columns and porosity measurement experiments at Cal State East Bay for the Bay Area Science Festival
• Fielded our interactive wind tunnel exhibit at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory booth at Oracle Park for the Bay Area Science Festival