We are busy assembling a great menu of opportunities to spark your curiosities in 2022!

While you are waiting, feel free to check out some of the amazing things our visitors experienced in 2019!

Alden Memorial

Music Perception and Robots

Location: Alden Memorial, Spaulding Recital Hall
Categories:  Robotics, Music, Technology, STEM
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Scott Barton

Description: In WPI’s Music Perception and Robotics Laboratory, WPI Professor Scott Barton explores how we perceive sound and how musical technologies, such as mechatronic and robotic musical instruments, can allow listeners to experience music in new ways. Visit the Spaulding Recital Hall in the lower level of Alden Memorial to see how Barton brings these two pursuits together through the creation of computer-controlled automatic mechanical instruments. Learn how he designs, builds, and controls these robotic instruments, and watch them in performance at 10, 11, 1 and 2pm.

10:00, 11:00, 1:00 and 2:00

 

Bartlett Center

Lifelong Learning at WPI

Location: Bartlett Center
Categories:  STEM, WPI Tour/Exhibit
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Jennifer Cluett

Description: Learn more about WPI’s programs, certificates and degree offerings through the Offices of Pre-Collegiate Outreach, the Massachusetts Academy for Math and Science, Undergraduate Admissions, Graduate Admissions, The Business School, Corporate and Professional Education and Career Development Center.

 

Home Network Security- An Expert Perspective

Location: Bartlett Center, Presentation Room
Categories:  Cybersecurity, Computer Science, Technology, STEM
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Craig Shue

Description: Is your home wireless network secure? Do you have good protection against bad actors seeking to steal your data or even harm your home? How can you know? In this half-hour session, Craig Shue, professor of computer science at WPI, will talk about how home networks work and review best practices for securing home networks. He will also talk about his own NSF-funded research which is aimed at creating a simple and robust way of taking the job of securing our networks out of our hands and putting it in the hands of experts in the cloud. There will be time for your questions about network security.

11:30, 12:30, and 1:30

Discovery Crossing

LEGO Boats

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Cindy Bergeron

Description: Playing with water can be a cool activity on a warm day. It can also provide some fun learning opportunities. In this water-based activity, you’ll find out about buoyancy by building a boat from LEGOs and discovering what makes it float, or sink.

Magic Beakers

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Cindy Bergeron

Description: Playing with water can be a cool activity on a warm day. It can also provide some fun learning opportunities. In this gravity defying feat water-based feat, observe how adding water to soil it creates capillary attraction that can hold the soil together and give it strength. So join us and Make a Splash!

 

Water Balloons

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Cindy Bergeron

Description: Playing with water can be a cool activity on a warm day. This water-based activity is just for fun. You’ll see how many times you can toss a water balloon back and forth with a friend before the balloon breaks. So join us and Make a Splash!
 

Fluid Transport- How Far Can You Shoot?

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:  Physics, Science, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Kun-Ta Wu

Description: Oil companies move fuel through pipelines; the water company sends water to your house through pipes. Pipe transport plays an important role in our lives. Transporting fluids through a pipe requires external pressure. Longer pipe needs greater pressure, which increases the danger of explosion. You’ll experience this phenomenon by shooting water at a target using 60-ml syringes connected to tubes of various sizes and lengths. Professor Kun-Ta Wu has found that active fluids will flow spontaneously through a closed-loop pipe of any length, opening the door to fluid transport systems that need no pumps nor external pressure.
 

Physics in Motion

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:  Physics, Science
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Doug Petkie

Description: Physics plays a big role in our daily lives. When we walk or run, throw a ball, take a corner on our bikes, or even turn on a light, physical forces and principles are at work. In this interactive exhibit, you will learn about forces, angular momentum and torque, electromagnetic interactions (eddy currents, magnetic levitation, etc.), and other physical phenomena through a variety of fun, hands-on demonstrations.
 

Solid or liquid? Discover a Non-Newtonian Fluid

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:  Physics, Science, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Kun-Ta Wu

Description: Non-Newtonian fluids exhibit two different phases depending on how you apply stress. When stress is applied, they behave like fluids. Applying stress quickly, they act like solids. In this activity, you will experiment with a non-Newtonian fluid made with cornstarch. Professor Kun-Ta Wu conducts research on another type of fluid: microtubule-based active gels, which also exhibit unusual phase behavior. The gels should act like solids, but they behave more like liquid. Just as with cornstarch, figuring out material’s phases is not trivial.
 

Technology and Games for Learning

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:  Mathematics, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Erin Ottmar

Description: In the Educational Psychology and Mathematics Learning Lab, directed by Professor Erin Ottmar, students are developing a number of innovative technologies and game-based applications designed to help students learn. Visit this tent at Discovery Crossing, where you can meet the researchers and try our their prototypes.
 

The Energy Boom

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:  Sustainability, Engineering, STEM
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Cameron Armstrong

Description: Hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity through a chemical reaction that combines hydrogen and oxygen. The only “waste product” is water. Chemical engineers at WPI are conducting research aimed at making these fuel cells more efficient as an alternative and renewable source of power. Learn about fuel cells from members of WPI’s Chemical Engineering Graduate Organization and watch an “explosive and electrifying” demonstration that shows what happens when hydrogen and oxygen come together in the presence of a platinum catalyst. Demos every half hour between 10 and 4 (NOTE: demonstration includes one loud bang)

10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, 3:00, and 3:30
 

The Future of Photonics

Location: Discovery Crossing
Categories:  Physics, Science, 3D Printing
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12), Adults
WPI Faculty: Doug Petkie

Description: Photonics involves the transmission and processing of information using light instead of electricity. Photonic devices are faster, use less power, and can be made at smaller scales than traditional integrated circuits. WPI, which is part of the national AIM Photonics, is currently building the LEAP (Laboratory for Education & Application Prototypes) facility where photonic integrated circuits will be designed and tested. Get a preview of this exciting facility by taking a tour of the temporary home for LEAP@WPI/QCC and seeing some of the equipment it will house, including a nano 3D printer for fabricating optical structures. Tours will be offered at 10, 10:30, 11, and 11:30 a.m. and 12:30, 1, 1:30, 2, 2:30, and 3 p.m. Sign-up is required and limited to 10 visitors per tour. Sign up at the Physics in Motion tent on Discovery Row.

10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, and 3:00

 

The Innovation Studio

Are You Positive It’s Positive?

Location: The Innovation Studio, Room 205
Categories:  Mathematics, Science
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Burt Tilley

Description: While some people perceive math as scary, it can also be a powerful antidote against fear in our daily lives. Medical tests which are read as “positive” or “negative” are prevalent, but the interpretation of a positive test depends on some basic factors. In this presentation, offered by the Center for Industrial Mathematics and Statistics in WPI’s Mathematical Sciences Department, learn about the powerful math of Bayes’s formula, which is the foundation of these tests, and is also the math that drives modern artificial intelligence. This show, presented by students in the departments 2019 Research Experience for Undergraduates program, will begin every 30 minutes, starting at 10 a.m.

10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 1:00, 1:30, and 2:00

 

Design Thinking: The Process of Creation and Innovation

Location: The Innovation Studio, Room 203
Categories:  Engineering, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Eleanor Loiacono

Description: What would you invent? Learn about the design thinking process with hands-on activities that will engage young and old alike. Sponsored by the Inclusive Design and Accessibility (IDEA) hub at WPI, this interactive exhibit will give attendees the opportunity to ideate and design products and tools that are inclusive.

 

Designing Tomorrow’s Materials

Location: The Innovation Studio, 2nd Floor
Categories:  Science, Engineering
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Yu Zhong

Description: To build the advanced products of the future, engineers will need to turn to new materials with unique properties that exactly match their needs. Finding those materials now can be a trial-and-error process that costs time and money. Yu Zhong in WPI’s Materials Science and Engineering Program is developing new integrated approaches to computer modelling that can make accurate predictions about material properties that can dramatically cut the time and cost of development. Learn about this research and see examples of how it can be used by industry, and see some fascinating demonstrations of material properties.
 

 Explore Ciphers and Codes

Location: The Innovation Studio,  2nd Floor
Categories:  Mathematics, Cybersecurity
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Burt Tilley

Description: Learn how people have used ciphers and codes throughout history to keep their communications secret, and then build your own cipher wheel and use it to write a secret message for a friend. This exhibit is organized by the Center for Industrial Mathematics and Statistics in WPI’s Mathematical Sciences Department and run by students in the departments 2019 Research Experience for Undergraduates program.
 

Layer by Layer- Learn About Additive Manufacturing

Location: The Innovation Studio,  1st Floor, Maker Space
Categories:  3D Printing, Engineering, Technology, STEM
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Sneha Narra

Description: Additive manufacturing is an advanced fabrication method in which materials are applied layer by layer until the final manufactured piece is complete. Professor Sneha Narra uses interdisciplinary knowledge from mechanical engineering and materials science to find ways to make additive manufacturing with metal more effective. In this exhibit, you’ll learn about her work and see examples of metal parts made with additive manufacturing. You’ll also get to observe a 3D printer (which makes plastic parts using additive manufacturing) and take away a small souvenir.
 

Robots Making Robots

Location: The Innovation Studio, Room 103
Categories:  Robots, STEM, Techology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Kevin Harrington

Description: WPI was the first university in the nation to launch a bachelor’s degree program in robotics engineering and today offers BS, MS, and PhD degrees in the field. Our students learn about robotics in two dedicated educational laboratories, one in Atwater Kent Labs and one in the new state-of-the-art Innovation Studio. Visit the Robotics Lab in The Innovation Studio and see where our students learn the fundamentals of robotics engineering. You will learn about the basics of robotics as you watch robotics demonstrations, including a walking cat robot, and watch 3D printers make robot arms and other parts—robots making robots!
 

Smart World Café- Building Tomorrow’s Smart and Connected World

Location: The Innovation Studio, 1st Floor, Maker Space
Categories:  Computer Science, Technology, STEM
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Alex Wyglinski

Description: WPI’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department is building the foundation of the smart and connected world that will transform our lives in the near future. Visit this expansive exhibit to learn about research and education in Autonomous Vehicles, E-Health, Cyberphysical Systems, Cybersecurity, and Wireless Connectivity. You will also get a close look at an autonomous vehicle testbed being used in current research on driverless cars. Future electrical and computer engineers can learn about electrical circuits, the building blocks of smart world applications, with hands-on activities.

 

The Face of DNA: Stranger Visions

Location: The Innovation Studio, Room  105
Categories:  Biology, Science
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Jill Rulfs

Description: We leave traces of our DNA everywhere—unintentionally (a shed hair) and intentionally (a saliva on a piece of gum). What could someone learn about us from that “evidence”? That’s what Heather Dewey-Hagborg asked in an art exhibit called “Stranger Visions.” She collected discarded items and, using DNA analysis, special software, and 3D printing, produced masks that showed what the strangers who left the objects might have looked like. Learn about the exhibit and the issues it raised. WPI faculty experts will answer your questions. In a companion exhibit in Goddard Hall, young scientist can learn how facial features are coded in DNA.
 

The Unconventional World of Soft Robotics

Location: The Innovation Studio, 2nd Floor
Categories:  Robotics. STEM, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Cagdas Onal

Description: Most robots are rigid, which makes them strong. But rigid robots can be unsafe to operate close to people, and they are at a disadvantage when it comes to squeezing through tight spaces. In the Soft Robotics Lab, Professor Cagdas Onal develops flexible, deformable robots for a wide range of applications, including search and rescue, teleoperation, and human augmentation. He also builds robots inspired by origami that combine flexibility and rigidity. Be sure to also see a bioinspired soft snake robot built in WPI’s Soft Robotics Lab in operation in the Control and Intelligent Robotics Lab at 85 Prescott Street.
 

Tour the Fitzgerald Prototyping Lab

Location: The Innovation Studio, 1st Floor, Prototype Lab
Categories:  3D Printing, Engineering, Technology, STEM
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Mitra Anand

Description: WPI’s New Innovation Studio includes the McDonough Makerspace and Fitzgerald Prototyping Lab, which provide undergraduate and graduate students the tools, technology, resources, and support to help them imagine, design, model, and tinker while they explore new ideas in a collaborative environment. Today, the Prototyping Lab will be open for tours by small groups. The lab includes a variety of state-of-the-art machines for making prototypes, including a printed circuit board maker, an industrial laser cutter, and several FDM 3D printers. Each tour lasts 15 minutes and is limited to 15 people; sign-up is required.

10:30, 11:00, 11:30, 12:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, 3:00, and 3:30
 

What Can You Learn from Making a Sandwich?

Location: The Innovation Studio  2nd Floor, Diamond Lounge
Categories:  Health, Food
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Eleanor Loiacono

Description: Bring your appetite—for learning—to this fun 15-minute talk. Learn about the socio-technical system by helping Professor Eleanor Loiacono make a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich. Attendees will be active participants in this activity, which is sponsored by the Inclusive Design and Accessibility (IDEA) hub at WPI.

11:30, 1:30, and 2:30

 

Gateway – 50 Prescott

Fire Protection Engineering Lab Tour

Location: Gateway – 50 Prescott
Categories:  Engineering, Fire, Science, WPI Tour
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Ray Ranellone

Description: Fire protection engineers develop new approaches to fire safety that save lives and property. WPI offers one of the world’s leading graduate programs in this field. It is also home to the largest university fire science laboratory in the United States. Research conducted here covers a wide range of topics, from making buildings more resilient to fire, better understanding wildfires, and using fire to clean up oil spills. Tour the Fundamentals Lab and two-story Performance Lab as you learn about fire dynamics and behavior and watch fire demonstrations. Each tour is limited to 25 people.

10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30

 

Gateway – 60 Prescott

At the Cutting Edge of Biomedical Engineering

Location: Gateway – 60 Prescott, Lobby
Categories:  Biology, Science, Technology
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Glenn Gaudette

Description: Visit the lobby of WPI’s Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center to meet WPI faculty members and students who are engaged in research that is advancing the frontiers of biomedical engineering. You will meet research teams that are: using spinach leaves as scaffolds to grow engineered tissue to repair damaged hearts; studying how mechanical forces affect the health of soft tissues, including heart valves; using biologically-derived biomaterials like silk to develop clinically translatable tissue regeneration and drug delivery strategies; designing biomaterials and implantable scaffolds to regenerate tissue and organs; and developing engineered blood vessels and trachea.

 

Gateway – 85 Prescott

Bio-Inspired and Wearable Robots

Location: Gateway – 85 Prescott
Categories:  Robots, Science
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Marko Popovic

Description: In the Popovic Labs, Professor Marko Popovic and his students explore how living systems function to learn how they can build robotic systems that can assist and augment people. Popovic has invented innovations like hydrobones and hydromuscles that give his bio-inspired and wearable robots unique capabilities. Meet with the Popovic Labs team and see some of their latest innovations. You will also have the opportunity to see a demonstration of a state-of-the-art industrial robot being used in an ongoing research project.
 

Biomimetic Locomotion in a Soft Snake Robot

Location: Gateway – 85 Prescott
Categories:  Robots, Biology, Engineering
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Jie Fu

Description: Bioinspired and biomimetic robots are fascinating to robotics scientists. Thanks to advanced manufacturing and computation technology, we are able to learn from biological systems and translate that to the design of controls for bioinspired soft snake robots built in WPI’s Soft Robotics Lab (visit that lab in The Innovation Studio on the main campus). In the Control and Intelligent Robotics Lab, you will observe a pneumatically actuated soft snake robot as is learns to follow provided way-points with a serpentine (real snake) gait, driven by its own “neuronal circuit” and “muscles” in locomotion.

 

Catch the Buzz on Swarming Robots

Location: Gateway – 85 Prescott
Categories:  Robots, Engineering, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Carlo Pinciroli

Description: Everyone has seem swarms of bees, ants, or birds moving about like a single creature. But did you know that robots can swarm, too? Coordinated swarms of small robots may one day help in search-and-rescue missions, planetary or underwater exploration, or even de-mining war zones. Inspired by nature, Carlo Pinciroli leads a research team that is trying to give robot swarms a sort of collective intelligence, so they can sense their environment, communicate, and work together efficiently and safely. Come see his swarms in action.

 

Robot Teleoperation through Human Motion Mapping

Location: Gateway – 85 Prescott
Categories:  Robots, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Zhi (Jane) Li

Description: Engineers are developing new ways to let people and robots work together, including teleoperation technology that allows operators to control robots at a distance. In this lab, see how a motion capture system can be used to record the motion of the whole body for use in controlling a robot’s movement. Then meet our robot Nurse, Trina, a tele-operated robot that can learn from human demonstration.

 

Robot Teleoperation, Soft Snakelike Robot & Swarming Robots Demonstrations

Location: Gateway – 85 Prescott
Categories:  Robots, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Zhi (Jane) Li

Description: See demonstrations by three of WPI’s engineering professors:  Jie Fu (Biomimetic Locomotion in a Soft Snake Robot), Shi (Jane) Li (Robot Teleoperation through Human Motion Mapping), and Carlo Pinciroli (Catch the Buzz on Swarming Robots).  They will all show how they put their advanced research in robotics into action in one 45-minute show.

11:00, 1:00, and 3:00

 

See Our New Labs with Our Robot Tour Guide

Location: Gateway – 85 Prescott
Categories:
Ages:
WPI Faculty: Jing Xiao

Description: Stop by the newly opened Robotics Engineering lab space on the 3rd Floor of 85 Prescott Street and relax as you watch videos about WPI’s robotics engineering research and student project work. You can also take a tour of the space with a robot tour guide developed this year by an undergraduate project team (Henry Dunphy, Zoraver Kang, and William Mosby, all members of the Class of 2019).
 

Surgical and Assistive Robotics

Location: Gateway – 85 Prescott, Room 230 (AIM Lab)
Categories:  Robots, Technology, Health
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Greg Fischer

Description: The Automation and Interventional Medicine (AIM) Lab works at the cutting edge of surgical and assistive robotics. Among its innovations are surgical robots that operate within MRI scanners, enabling surgical procedures like cancer diagnosis and therapy to be guided by real-time imaging. The lab’s work in assistive robotics includes devices to help stroke victims regain use of their arms and hands and a robotic penguin for use in autism therapy. Visit the lab see these and other innovations and learn about WPI’s PracticePoint, a research, development, and commercialization alliance aimed at advancing healthcare technologies, which will open this fall.

 

Gateway Lawn

A Better Way to Detect Concussion

Location: Gateway Lawn
Categories:  Engineering, Health, Physics, Sports
Ages: All
WPI Faculty: Songbai Ji

Description: Biomedical engineering professor Songbai Ji is seeking better ways to detect and diagnose traumatic brain injuries, including concussions. He is developing computer models that reveal how the brain’s most vulnerable tissues, particularly white matter neural tracts, respond to being stretched and strained by impacts, which he believes will be a good indicator of injury. Ji, whose research has been funded by major awards from the National Institutes of Health, says he hopes this work will lead to a tool that can one day be used for the clinical diagnosis of concussion on the sports field.

 

Goddard Hall

Be a Biomedical Engineer for a Day

Location: Goddard Hall, Room 207
Categories:  Engineering, Sports, Technology, Biology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Tiffiny Butler

Description: Find out how biomedical engineers use their problem-solving skills to solve real-world challenges. This year, you’ll see how they use their understanding of the biomechanics of the human musculoskeletal system (our muscles and bones) to develop innovations in the world of sports. You’ll get to try two interactive activities. In the first, you will build a shoe from simple materials and then use a force plate to compare your center of pressure wearing the shoe you built and your own shoe to test your stability. You’ll also make a small helmet and see how well your design protects a paintball inside as you drop the helmet from a height.
 

Experience Biochemistry: Glowing Reactions

Location: Goddard Hall, Room 110
Categories:  Chemistry, Science, Biology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Arne Gericke

Description: Do you know what makes fireflies glow? The answer is biochemistry. Fireflies and a number of other bioluminescent animals make a light-emitting chemical know as with luciferin. When you combine it with an enzyme, luciferase, and energy in the form of ATP, you get light. In this activity, you’ll work in a real university biochemistry teaching lab as you learn about fast enzymatic reactions, catalysts, and bioluminescence. The activity takes 45-minutes and is suggested for middle school and above. Room is limited; sign-up is required

10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00
 

Experience Chemistry: Make a Raspberry-Flavored Solar Cell

Location: Goddard Hall, Rooms 109
Categories:  Chemistry, Science, Sustainability
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Arne Gericke

Description: Photovoltaic cells convert light into electricity. Most solar cells are made from silicon, but there are other ways to produce them. In this interactive activity you will work in a real university chemistry teaching lab to build a working dye-sensitized photovoltaic cell. This cell uses raspberry juice as a dye to absorb light and transfer electrons to titanium dioxide. The activity takes 45-minutes and is suggested for middle school and above. Room is limited; sign-up is required

10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00

Fun with Chemistry

Location: Goddard Hall, Room 306
Categories:  Chemistry, Science
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Arne Gericke

Description: Learn about how chemicals combine and interact to shape the world around us through these hands-on activities: Play with Magnetic Slime; Do Chemistry with Light; Explore Hot and Cold Packs; and more!
 

The Face of DNA- The Science of Phenotypes

Location: Goddard Hall, Rooms 205 & 206
Categories:  Biology, Technology
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Jill Rulfs

Description: We each have a unique face, but we share facial features that are typically present in one of two variations. Some have smooth chins, some cleft chins. Some have widow’s peaks or dimples, some don’t. In this activity, you’ll learn how these and other physical characteristics, or phenotypes, are controlled by our DNA—specifically by genes with dominant and recessive alleles. You’ll get familiar with DNA by extracting it from strawberries, then create a genetic map of a face based on some common traits. See how many different faces you can make with just five genetic traits. In a companion exhibit in The Innovation Studio, learn how an artist explored provocative questions raised by the emerging science of genetic phenotyping.
 

Higgins Labs

Keeping Things Cool in Space

Location: Higgins Labs, Room 248
Categories:  STEM, Technology, Space
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Jamal Yagoobi

Description: WPI Professor Jamal Yagoobi and his students will provide guided tours of the Multi-Scale Heat Transfer Lab, featuring NASA-funded research on two-phase heat transport systems that the lab is developing and testing for cooling satellites and spacecraft. An experiment demonstrating the new technology has been undergoing a long-term test on the International Space Station. Another major experiment will fly to the station in the near future.

 

Olin Hall

A Virtual Tour of the Universe

Location: Olin Hall, Room 107
Categories:  Physics, Science, Space
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Germano Iannacchione

Description: Ride along on a 40-minute journey from the Earth to the edges of the known universe, from the impossibly small to the unimaginably big, in a show that employs computer graphics and NASA images. Shows for all ages at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m.; shows for younger audiences at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

10:00, 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00

 

Rubin Campus Center

ASSISTments- Technology to Empower Teachers

Location: Rubin Campus Center, Lobby
Categories:  Mathematics, Technology, STEM
Ages: Middle and High School (6-12)
WPI Faculty: Cristina Heffernan

Description: Learn about and try out ASSISTments, a nationally recognized online system developed by researchers at WPI and used by schools around the country. The free, web-based system, which has been demonstrated at the White House and rigorously tested in research conducted by SRI International, helps students learn while simultaneously assessing their progress.

 

CEE Exhibits

Location: Rubin Campus Center, 1946 Lounge
Categories:
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: CIndy Bergeron

Description: More info coming soon!
 

Sustainability in Action

Location: Rubin Campus Center, 1946 Lounge
Categories:
Ages:
WPI Faculty: Paul Mathisen

Description: Everyone has a role to play in creating a sustainable world, where our natural resources are conserved and our negative impact on the natural environment is minimized. In this exhibit, you will see how we can reduce our energy usage and our impact on our valuable water resources. You will also learn about Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s Think Blue MA Campaign, which seeks to reduce runoff and keep our state’s lakes, rivers, and streams clean and healthy. And you can learn about WPI’s extensive sustainability efforts and take a self-guided sustainability tour of the campus.
 

 

 

Salisbury Laboratories

Graspable Math

Location: Salisbury Laboratories, Rooom 133
Categories:  Mathematics, Technology
Ages: All ages
WPI Faculty: Erin Ottmar

Description: One of the obstacles to learning mathematics is becoming comfortable with algebraic notation. Professor Erin Ottmar, a learning sciences researcher who develops and evaluates classroom interventions that improve mathematics teaching and learning, taps into our natural abilities to manipulate objects to develop innovative teaching tools that make math intuitive and fun. These include From Here to There, a puzzle-based, educational iPad application; and Graspable Math, an interactive web-based tool that allows students to manipulate and solve mathematical expressions and equations. Visit Ottmar’s lab to learn more about her work and try out her innovative technologies.

 

Sports and Recreation Center

Spark Your Imagination

Location: Sports and Recreation Center
Categories:  Engineering, Technology, STEM
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Jim O’Rourke

Description: Learn about electricity and electrostatics in this “hair-raising” set of demonstrations performed by Jim O’Rourke, department manager/adjunct professor in WPI’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Sparky Junior, a Van de Graaff generator. Guided by electronics technician Bill Appleyard, you can try out a number of hands-on activities that will demonstrate the principles of electricity and electromechanics that make many everyday devices work.

 

Washburn Shops

Advanced Manufacturing Technology

Location: Washburn Shops, Room 108
Categories:  3D Printing, Engineering
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Toby Bergstrom

Description: Visit the HAAS Technical Education Center to learn how CNC (computer-numerical control) machines and other advanced manufacturing technology (including robots, laser cutters, and 3-D printers) works, and see it all in action. You might even get to manufacture your own souvenir.
 

Living in Our Materials World

Location: Washburn Shops, Room 113
Categories:  Engineering, Science, Chemistry
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Diana Lados

Description: Through interactive demonstrations using liquid nitrogen, carrots, Play-Doh, gumdrops, balloons, bouncy balls, and more, learn about materials’ crystal structures, atomic packing and bonding, and properties like ductility and strength, as well as their use in practical applications. Also, the work of WPI’s materials science and engineering faculty and students will be showcased. Demonstrations at 10, 10:30, 11, 11:30, and noon.

10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30, and 12:00
 

WPI’s Tall, Dark, and Humanoid Robot

Location: Washburn Shops, Room 108
Categories:  Robots, Technology, STEM
Ages: All Ages
WPI Faculty: Mike Gennert

Description: Meet WARNER (WPI’s Atlas Robot for Nonconventional Emergency Response), the six-foot, 4-inch, 353-pound humanoid robot who was WPI’s entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a national contest aimed at demonstrating the ability of next-generation humanoid robots to respond to natural and man-made disasters. WARNER, who continues to be a platform for cutting-edge research at WPI, will show off his remarkable abilities in a 15-minute show at 15 minutes past each hour.Follow the signs to the garage door on the north side of Washburn Shops. Between half past and the top of each hour, have your photo taken with Warner.