The James Webb Telescope is the biggest telescope in space!  It was sent into space to study old and far away things in space.  It is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments to help it in its mission.  It is helping scientists to study new stars, galaxies, and atmospheres of exoplanets.  It is in a solar orbit approximately 930,000 miles from us.  Click through the slideshow to see some amazing images that the telescope has sent back to Earth!  (All image credit goes to NASA.)

There are two distinct subspecies of white rhino.  The southern white rhino is a common and widespread kind of rhino, while the northern white rhino is on the verge of extinction.  Northern white rhinos are listed as critically endangered.  As far as we can tell, they may already be extinct in the wild.  The last male northern white rhino in captivity died in 2018, and the two remaining females have been unable to carry a calf to term.

However, scientists this year announced that they may have discovered a way to save the northern white rhino from complete extinction.  By harvesting eggs from  the female northern white rhinos and using sperm from the dead male northern white rhinos, scientists were able to create viable embryos.  These embryos were implanted into southern white rhinos via IVF.  The procedure produced a successful pregnancy!

Rhinos have long gestation periods--16-18 months!  Sadly, the surrogate mother carrying the northern white rhino fetus died of a bacterial infection eleven months into her pregnancy.  A post-mortem on the surrogate mother found that the embryo had been developing well and had a 95% chance of being born alive if the mother had survived.  Scientists plan to implant more embryos in the coming months and continue trying to save the northern white rhinos.

Learning how to collaborate and work as a team is essential in STEM.  These activities are designed to help build communication and problem solving skills--plus, they're fun!

Flip the sheet:
Break students into groups and then have them take turns standing as a team on top of a twin sized bedsheet.  The objective is to flip the sheet over without anyone stepping off of it and without speaking!

Blind building:
Everyone needs a partner for this one.  With their partner out of the room, give Partner A a toy made of Legos.  They must disassemble the toy and write instructions for how to build the toy.  When they are done, Partner B must reassemble the toy using only the written guide created for them by Partner A.

Hula hoop pass-through:
Have everyone stand in a circle and hold hands.  The hula hoop should be over one person's arm before they grab hands.  The object is to get the hula hoop to travel around the circle without letting go of any hands.  For an added competitive element, split the group into two and see which group can pass the hula hoop the fastest!

If you try any of these activities, we would love to hear how it went!  Comment below with any other great team building ideas that we should try.

Your hand is amazing!  Think of all things it can do.  You can pick up and hold things, play an instrument, turn off the lights...the list goes on!  The website Science Buddies has a bunch of great experiments that you can make at home or school.  Try out this experiment from their website to see if you can create a robot hand that can do one of the things your incredible hand can do!

Meteors come from comet particles and bits of broken asteroids.  When comets pass by the sun, they leave debris trails.  Every year, the Earth passes through these, and when it does, the pieces of debris collide with the atmosphere and create fiery streaks in the sky.  This is known as a meteor shower.

The Perseids are perhaps the most spectacular meteor shower of the year.  The meteors get their name from the constellation Perseus, which is where they appear to visibly emanate from.  The meteors don't originate there; they just appear in that section of the sky.  Perseids often leave long streaks of light behind as they soar through the atmosphere.  You can often see between 50 and 100 meteors an hour during this shower!

The Perseids peak in mid-August, but are visible in the sky until about September 1st.  In fact, the best time to watch the Perseids is tonight!  Starting around midnight, the moon will set, leaving a dark sky in the perfect condition to watch the show (if the weather cooperates, of course).  The best time to watch the Perseids is generally in the pre-dawn hours, but it is sometimes possible to view meteors from this shower as early as 10 PM.

Rube Goldberg Machines are chain-reaction contraptions designed to complete a simple task in a complicated and impractical way.  They are named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg who often drew cartoons of people performing simple activities in complex (and often impossible in real life) ways.  Challenge your friends or family with this fun Rube Goldberg inspired activity.

Objective: Turn off a light

Materials (These are all suggestions.  Challenge players to think of supplies they think might be useful.): Aluminum foil, cardboard, water bottles, paper towel tubes, books, cans, dominoes, string, marbles, golf balls, batteries, small motors, cups, Lego blocks, buckets, sticks

Activity: Create a Rube Goldberg device that uses at least ten chain-reaction steps to turn off a light switch.  Take a video testing your device and share it with us!

Here's a hint that might help if you're running into difficulties.  More complex or small and fiddly parts of your machine should usually go toward the beginning.  It's generally much easier to reset the first part of a complicated machine than the end of it.

Check out this video by the band OK Go to see an awesome example of a huge Rube Goldberg Machine!

Hopefully you had a chance this month to be dazzled by some amazing fireworks!  Did you know that fireworks are chemical reactions?  There are a lot of different kinds of fireworks.

Here's how one of the most popular kinds of fireworks works.  To set off a firework, you light a fuse.  The heat from the flame travels along the fuse, until it reaches the bottom of the main part of the firework (shell).  When it reaches this point, it ignites a lift charge, which is made out of black powder.  When the heat touches the black powder, it creates hot gases and lots of energy! These forces launch the shell out of the tube it is sitting in (called a mortar).  The shell is full of small pellets.  Once the firework reaches a certain height, a second fuse inside of it ignites and activates a burst charge.  This sets off the pellets, which explode into colors and sounds.

What the explosion from a firework looks like depends on the chemicals inside of the pellets.  Some fireworks contain metal salts, which create bright colors.  Here are the metal salts used and the colors they produce:

Strontium: Red
Calcium: Orange
Sodium: Yellow
Barium: Green
Copper: Blue (This is one of the hardest colors to create in a firework.  For more on this, check out this article.)
Strontium and Copper: Purple
Magnesium, Aluminum, and Titanium: White

Some fireworks have chemical compounds that cause effects like sparkling or strobing lights.  Some even use different chemicals to create sound effects!  For instance, bismuth makes a crackling or popping sound, while potassium chlorate creates a loud boom.

Fireworks can be awesome, but because of the high heats and explosions involved in setting them off, they are also very dangerous!  Unfortunately, sometimes things do go wrong and people get hurt.  Always make sure that you are following proper fire safety measures when you are setting off fireworks at home.  Put enough distance between yourself and a lit firework, never relight a firework that didn't go off, keep flammable liquids away, and have a bucket of water nearby in case of an emergency.  Be safe and enjoy your chemical reactions!

At most of our camps, campers have an opportunity to build and launch a model rocket.  If you love that part of camp and can't wait until next year to have that experience again, here are some model rockets that you can buy now or make at home.

First of all, we want to give a shout-out to our rocket supplier Belleville Wholesale Hobby.  They carry the Starhawk rockets that we use at camp, as well as many other models that you can buy in bulk or individually.  They are a great company and have had a decades long relationship with STAR Camp.  Ron Becker is the owner.  Tell him STAR Camp sent you.

If homemade is more your style, here are a few rockets you can make at home.
With paper, tape, and some PVC pipe, make a stomp rocket.  Click on the link for detailed directions from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

If you want a super simple rocket that you can make with stuff you most likely have at home, check out JPL's instructions for how to make straw rockets.

For a rocket that you can propel with just a rubber band, check out JPL's foam rocket video.

We would absolutely love to see how your rockets turn out!  Share videos and comments below with your results.

With the Summer Olympics fast approaching, athletes are preparing for the games by doing everything they can to build up their strength and stamina.  A lot of science goes into helping an athlete reach their peak performance.  A few ways that science affects the Olympics are:

Biomechanics: Biomechanics is the study of human movement, including the interaction of a person and the equipment they are using.  It is generally broken down into two different areas.  Kinetics is the study of internal and external forces acting on the body.  Kinematics is the study of movements of the body as a result of these forces.  In sports, biomechanics uses a detailed analysis of sports movements in order to reduce injuries and enhance performance.  It can also be used to explain how some athletes excel in different sports.  For example, Simone Biles is 4 feet 8 inches tall, which is a good height for a gymnast.  She has trained her body to have near perfect control.  Combine that with her strength and speed and you can see the results!

Physics: Understanding practical applications of physics helps athletes and coaches develop better techniques in pretty much all sports.  Principles of gravity, force, and momentum, for instance, are at play every time a body is in motion.  One example of physics being applied in the Olympics is with runners.  Newton's second law, often summarized as force equals mass times acceleration, tells us that for something to start moving, a net force must get it going.  Aside from their own bodies, sprinters need a force to kick off their acceleration.  In order to get as large of an acceleration as possible,  they kick off of starting blocks as hard as they can to create as large of a net force as possible.

Nutrition and Physiology: There is no one size fits all method for eating a healthy diet, but science can certainly help us to optimize our diets to the lifestyle we are living.  When it comes to Olympic athletes, they generally tend to eat healthy diets that are designed to help them perform at their best.  Swimmer Michael Phelps famously ate 10,000 calories a day while he was training six hours a day for the Olympics, but that is not appropriate for every athlete.  Canadian boxer Tammara Thibeault is a vegetarian, though when she is competing and travelling, she is not as strict with her diet because it can be difficult to meet her protein needs without meat.  Nutritional science helps all Olympic athletes determine the diet that makes them feel the strongest and provides the proper nutrients to give them strength and stamina.

The 2024 Olympics will begin on Friday, July 26th.

Twenty years ago today, the spacecraft Cassini traveled past Saturn and sent back an unprecedented look at the planet's rings.  Here are a few of those stunning images.  All image credit: NASA