The kind folks at the Boise WaterShed Environmental Education Center invited me to speak with their visitors today. It was a wonderful crowd of young children and their parents.
As always the kids asked the best, most challenging questions, such as “Why do the planets go around the Sun?” and “What would happen if the Moon fell to the Earth?“.
I did my best to answer their questions and also gave them a tour of the night sky using the sky simulator stellarium.
Among the displays at the education center was a tray full of sand. As you dragged your hand through the sand, a computer projected topographic contours onto the sand that were updated in real-time to show how water would flow. Apparently, this set-up is called an “Augmented Reality Sandbox“. The video above shows how it works.
