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Title:
Hangout with Scientific American from the USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, DC!
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Description:
*Hangout with Scientific American to get inspired at the hottest event in science this weekend: the USA Science & Engineering Festival!*
It's a FREE family-friendly expo with more than 3,000 hands-on activities and 150 stage performances, running from 9-6 on Saturday, April 26, and Sunday, April 27, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center here in Washington, D.C. We'll be broadcasting LIVE on Saturday starting at 7am Eastern time, before the show opens.
Meet the two founders of the festival, Larry Bock and Ray O. Johnson. You will learn about some awesome exhibits at Lockheed Martin, the Festival's founding and presenting host, and from the Society of American Magicians. And if you come by Scientific American's booth, you can try our easy-to-do "Bring Science Home" activities; be a paleontologist with the SharkFinder program, Paleo Quest scientists and Zeiss microscopes; check out some exciting new offerings in STEM education from Macmillan Science & Education; and take part in actually editing a scientific journal for kids!
Saturday, April 26, 4AM PT / 7AM ET / 1200 GMT
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Hello, I'm Maria D'Chrisina,
editor-in-chief at Scientific American
¶
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and we're live here from the show floor
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of the USA Science and Engineering
festival and expo,
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which is going on Saturday April 26th
and Sunday, April 27th,
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at the Walter E. Washington
Convention Center
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here in Washington, D.C.
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In the next half hour we're going
to chat with some exciting guests.
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We'll meet the two founders
of the festival,
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Larry Bock and Ray O. Johnson.
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We'll learn about the awesome booth
at Lockheed Martin,
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the festival's founding
and presenting host,
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and we'll visit
with the Society of American Magicians.
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Last, we'll talk about some cool stuff
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here at the Scientific American,
which is also a festival sponsor.
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At Scientific American's booth,
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you can try our easy-to-do
brain science home activities,
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the paleontologist
with the shark finding program,
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Paleo Quest scientist
and Zeiss microscopes.
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Check out some exciting new offerings
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in STEM education
from Macmillan science and education,
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And take part in actually editing
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a scientific journal for kids
called "Frontiers for Young Minds."
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So now let's meet Larry Bach
and Ray O Johnson,
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the awesome co-founders
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of the USA Science
and Engineering Festival.
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Ray is also
Lockheed Martin's senior vice president
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and chief technology officer.
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Thank you very much for joining me.
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Our pleasure, Thank you.
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It's really my pleasure.
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So tell us,
why did you create the festival?
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and what is going on here
this weekend?
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You know our premise
is society gets what it celebrates
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so we celebrate athletes,
pop stars,
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Hollywood actors and actresses.
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And we generate a lot of wanna-be's
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but we don't celebrate
science and engineering.
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So our goal was to put on
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the world's largest celebration
of science and engineering.
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That's awesome, awesome goal.
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What are some (audio glitch) here
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and how many people
are you expecting this weekend?
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We have literally
a thousand organizations here
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doing over 3,000
hands-on interactive exhibits
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and 150 stage shows.
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So you will see everything here
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from the Orion Space Capsule,
the Surgical Robot,
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the virtual reality environment
at one end of the extreme,
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making structures with marshmallows
and toothpicks
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at the other end of the extreme.
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I especially want to try
the marshmallows and toothpicks.
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I have to say,
I'm a little bit hungry this morning.
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So, thank you.
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So Ray, we're here
at the Lockheed Martin booth.
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I got to tell you guys,
it's awesome; it's huge.
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There's a lot of amazing activities.
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I think I counted more than 350.
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And kids can take a trip to (inaudible)
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(inaudible) robot
which I was checking out yesterday
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(Audio glitch)
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Tell me about.
These are just a few of them.
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Tell me a little bit more about those.
What are some of the things?
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We do have over 40 exhibits here,
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but we're part of hundreds of exhibits
and thousands of demonstrations
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that are taking place over
the next two days here.
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We're allowing the visitors
to explore some of the new areas.
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[?] working robotics, some of the
flight simulators,
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which we're well known for and they love,
[?] how to fly the [?] and the F-35
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and also renewable energy,
and some of the problems in the future.
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I think that's what we will be
focusing on here.
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When kids think about going
into STEM careers,
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That's science, technology,
engineering and math,
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they think of difficult subjects.
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I have to take Calculus,
I need to understand Physics,
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so it seems very difficult and very hard.
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Therefore, a lot of kids are not
going into STEM fields and those areas [?]
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What we're doing in this festival,
as you've said, the largest festival
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of its kind in the world,
what we're doing is,
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through the hands-on experience,
getting kids excited.
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And letting them understand
that they can have
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that same thrill of victory
that you get in sports
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by engaging in problem solving
in engineering [?].
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In fact, we're gonna have some
science cheerleaders here
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a little bit later on today.
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We have basketball players here,
and what the cheerleaders
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and the basketball players
and sports figures help us do
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is prove that STEM is cool.
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Yeah, I think that's awesome.
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- It's more fuel for curious minds.
- Exactly.
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And, as Lockheed and others
have shown us,
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if you put that effort it will push you far.
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I really appreciate it,
it was so super to speak with you
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Larry and Ray, thank you so much.
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Is there anything you want to leave with the folks while we
are waiting for [?] to come up?
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- I would say, get here early.
- Yeah!
-Number one.
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And this event will take more
than two days to do
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so plan on both Saturday and Sunday.
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Yeah, I think we're gonna have
hundreds of thousands of visitors
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here today, and the nice thing
about doing this in Washington
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is we have a diverse crowd.
What this does is it [?] STEM down
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[audio glitch] underrepresented today
in science [?]
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and we need those people to
enter the engineering and STEM fields.
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So that's why Washington is
such a great place to have this.
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Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more.
I really think science is an engine
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of human prosperity and wellbeing
so I'm psyched that you guys are here.
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- Thank you.
- Thanks so much.
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- Thank you.
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Great having you, I know you're
really busy today, thanks for joining us.
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- Thank you.
- My pleasure.
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Thank you.
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So now we're gonna be joined
by Christopher Bodges,
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of the Society of American Magicians
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and he's going to talk a little bit about
cool science [?] and such you can see
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at his [?]
- Thank you.
- Tell us what's going on today, Chris.
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I am going to start by telling you
why we're here
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because a lot of people might be interested
in why the magicians are
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at a Science and Engineering festival.
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And the answer is that magic is really
just science mixed with creativity.
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The illusions that we create are based
on principals of science,
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engineering technology and math
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and we give them creative presentations
to make them entertaining
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but a lot of scientists and engineers are
hobby magicians
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because of the creative aspect and the
background magic has in those disciples.
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I actually attended a whole conference once
about studies [?] illusions [?]
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It's fascinating stuff and we love
to do it. We love to share.
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At our booth we have lots of hands-on
activities
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Some magical illusions, some optical illusions
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that kids can try and adults, for that
matter, can try hands-on
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and see what's going on
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One of those is this.
- O yeah good, I'm glad you brought some.
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Let's put our hands on it
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It's just a two liter bottle filled with water
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There's a ketchup packet floating inside,
as ketchup packets tend to do
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But with a little bit of magic
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That ketchup packet
- (laughing)
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sinks!
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See it went all the way down,
that's cool.
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A little more magic it will come right back.
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Now, I know magicians are notoriously
uh, careful I would say
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about sharing some of their secrets
- This is true
- but if people come to your booth
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maybe they'll learn a little bit about
the science [?]
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They can learn a little bit about that
what we do, we never share our secrets
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with anyone who is not a magician.
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But if you demonstrate the fact that you
are interested in learning magic
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We will share some secrets with you.
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And to that end we have a book available
to anyone who's interested.
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It's an ebook, but I printed one
so you could see it.
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It says "STEM Magic"
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This is filled with magic tricks that
are based on principals of
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science, technology engineering and math.
They're all things that you can do at home.
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Some of them are things that you can print
out, there are a couple optical illusions
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in here that you can print out and cut out
and otherwise...
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That's super [?]
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Otherwise you can read the instructions
and learn to do magic.
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And so you can make it on your own
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We also have at our booth a full-size
illusion that you can get into
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We can remove your head from your body
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Not actually. But it sure looks like it.
And it makes for a really great [?]
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I'm trying it out!
It's not like that actually.
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But we don't see the body,
we just see the head.
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And you can take a picture where you
have your head on a sword.
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So you are welcome to come and
get your head removed.
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The reattachment process is slightly
painful and involves some duct tape.
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But it's a lot of fun and it's a great
picture to share with your friends.
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And we have some magicians there
who are showing some magic for fun.
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Awesome.
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Thanks very much. Did you have
something else for showing us now?
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I'll show you one more thing.
- One more surprise
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Magicians don't [audio glitch] couple
of people, I found that out recently.
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A guy came to me and asked me
if I could change a dollar.
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I said of course I can, I'm a magician.
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He said he wanted four quarters,
so I took his dollar
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and I folded it, one, two, three,
four times [?] and squeeze.
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It's getting very teeny
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And I opened it back up
and I showed him
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how I ... change ... a dollar.
- Oh man!
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I've been staring right at it
and I do not know how he did that.
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See, it's one dollar, it's four quarters.
Get it?
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Yeah, it's four quarters, I get it.
Awesome!
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He didn't like the joke.
Or the trick.
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Was he [?] ?
- Yeah.
- That's probably why.
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So the best thing I could do was
to fold it back up.
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Give it another squeeze.
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And return it the way he found it so he
could get his change somewhere else.
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(laughing) Chris that was awesome,
thanks a million for joining us
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here at the USA Science and Engineering
Festival and I hope people will come by and
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learn more about the science
behind the illusion.
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I hope so, too. We're happy to see ya. Thanks.
- Thanks a lot.
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So now, let's meet Jason Osbourne and
Aaron Alfred of Helioquest.
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Jason and Aaron, you're joining us actually-
don't be scared, I won't bite you.
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You're joining us at the Scientific American
booth, which is at 13:11
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And tell us what you're doing
with the kids
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You've already been [?] that you're
doing awesome things, so let's see.
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Awesome. We have a lot of hands-on for
kids in the Scientific American booth.
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We have 'Shark Finder', which is a
hands-on science project,
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where kids can actually find and discover
new occurrences or even possibly
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new species of sharks.
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Absolutely. We're really excited about that.
We also have about a quarter of a ton
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of fossils that we give away to folks
that come by and ask really good questions.
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And these fossils are just like this.
- Can I have a hold on to one of these?
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Oh, absolutely.
- Look at this. It's a little heavy.
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What is this [?]
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So this is a vertebral whale.
A small whale. And we're giving
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hundreds and hundreds of pounds of
fossils away to kids.
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You mean I could get a whale?
- Absolutely.
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Actually you could just keep that one
for yourself.
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(laughing) That's cool.
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And then we have hands-on for kids
as well. - What is that?
