In addition to conducting classical science experiments, the science segment of an Experimental Zone meeting can include:
- Sharing the awesome and challenging journey of inventors, innovators, and scientists with biographical information, their breakthroughs, and the obstacles they had to overcome. Examples include:
• The case of Ignaz Semmelweis and puerperal fever from germs circa 1850.
• Eratosthenes 250 CE calculation of the circumference of the world
• Lynn Margulis – and the theory of Endosymbiosis circa 1967
2. How Things Work — explaining the world of tech in everyday life such as cars, 4K large screen TVs, refrigeration, smart phones, and laptops.
3. Thinking as a scientist — formulating a test to yield reliable results including identifying one’s own bias and how to compensate for it. An example is setting up a social scientific experiment.
4. Futurism and Human Identity — Updates on state of the art and cutting edge innovations and their implications -especially in areas such as AI, bioengineering, and robotics.
5. Invention workshops — making elements of inventing understood and available for tinkering including: Simple Machines such as pulleys, wedges, screws, levers, gears, rack and pinions, crank and rods, and ratchets; also 3d printing, and components of electrical devices.
6. Exploring the strange world of quantum phenomenon — sublime and cognitively dissonant aspects of reality. The surprising way electrons can interact as in the double-slit experiment, and quantum entanglement: instantaneous communication of information between entangled particles that seems to defy spatial boundaries.
7. Screening science and technology series classics like Cosmos and Connections and newer productions on cosmology and physics like those from Jim Al-Khalili and Brian Greene’s World Science Festival.