I'm a Little Bit Famous Now

Just kidding, I am in no way famous. I did, however, get to be on the local news as a library representative earlier this morning.

The local organization Grand Canyon State Model Railroaders have been at our library with a giant HO Scale model train exhibit since Wednesday, and they will be here until the end of the week. The exhibit is pretty amazing. It takes up our entire program room, which has a capacity of over 300 people. All the models are handmade by members of the group, and each is based on a different town with an interesting history. The train cars themselves are one 68th to scale of a real train, meaning it would take 68 of the models to make up one life size train car. The speed they travel around the track is also to scale, which is an interesting tidbit I learned while preparing for my interview.

These are a couple pictures I got from their Facebook page. Click the link above to visit their page and see some cool videos of the trains in action!

In preparation for my interview, I worked with our marketing team to come up with some reasons we wanted to have trains at the library.

• Multi-generational programming: Trains are nostalgic for a lot of people, and interesting to people of all ages. This exhibit is something all members of the family can enjoy and discuss.
• STEM: Science, technology, engineering, and math. 
• There are quantifiable physics involved with the way trains move on the tracks.
• Evolution of the technology of trains over the decades.
• Math of figuring out accurate scale of models to life size trains.
• History: Each handmade model is based on a real historical town.
• Community engagement: Getting people into the library who wouldn't usually come, or who have never been before. 
• The library supports engagement hobbies such as making scale models as part of lifelong learning.

Of course, I didn't actually get to use any of these great talking points in my interviews. They just wanted the bare bones from me: We are excited to have the trains here, everything is free, and it's running all week until Saturday. 

The first video does not include me, but has some great information from one of the Grand Canyon Model Railroaders about the exhibit.

Here are my two big exciting interviews, that are definitely not filmed with iPhone cameras straight off the TV (Just kidding, they are):

(1 more video to come)

Later in the day, Channel 10 also came and interviewed a different member of the group.

Overall, facilitating media visits and being interviewed for the news was a really cool experience. I didn't stumble over my words nearly as much as I thought I would, even though it was 5:00 in the morning and I had had roughly an hour to memorize my talking points. I felt really excited to be representing the library, and the city, on the TV news. Sometimes I feel like a door-to-door salesman or religious zealot trying to spread the good word of the public library, but I'm so psyched every time I get to tell more people about it! I know the news spots were really more about the train exhibits than the library, but even so, a bunch of people will probably visit the library who might have never been in before. That's what library programming is all about!

In closing, here is a selfie I took with the camera guy, Brett, and the reporter, John.

Gingerbread Geometry

Another awesome winter program!

Also, another program that I did not technically plan, but did help out with the staffing. Sara planned this one with another staff member who got sick unexpectedly, so I jumped in to help pass out materials and answer questions. It ended up being a total blast; we took the tradition of making gingerbread houses and added a mathematical twist!

Materials:

• Graham crackers (6 per child)
• Icing (Can be store bought, or made using powdered sugar and water)
• Assortment of candy for decorating
• Plastic table covering
• Plastic knives (one per child)
• Ruler (one per child)
• Disposable trays (one per child)

Using graham crackers instead of gingerbread was key for this program, for a couple of reasons. One, easier to find and cheaper to purchase. Two, they are perfectly rectangular.

Step one: Give each child six graham crackers.
Step two: Cut one inch off of two of your graham crackers.
Step three: Using icing, form a rectangle with the graham crackers to be the walls of your house.

At this point, there was a discussion about area. The audience was slightly younger than I think Sara was anticipating. She was planning to have tweens who would understand math concepts, but we ended up with a couple of tweens and the rest under five years old. So she skipped having them write down the wall measurements and then multiplying those measurements to find the area of the house. She also briefly explained what the volume of a shape is, but skipped the written part of figuring out the volume of our houses. In case you want to do this with an older age group, here is that information (the inch measurements are not exact, just examples. As a group you can measure your crackers and figure out the exact measurements).

Area: The side of a surface
Area = width x height; A=wh

Long sides of the graham crackers are 5 inches (length). Short sides are 4 inches (width). The area of the gingerbread houses are length times width, or 5x4=20. The area of your house is 20 inches.

Volume: The measure of the amount of space inside a solid figue
Volume = length x width x height; V=lwh

Long sides of the graham crackers are 5 inches (length). Short sides are 4 inches (width). When standing up, the crackers are 2 inches tall (height). The volume of the gingerbread houses are 5x4x2=40. 

Instead of doing the math with pencils and paper, we moved on to the next part of the building.

Step four: Use your remaining two graham crackers to add a triangular or flat roof
Step five: Decorate with icing and candy!

While we had a few families attempt the triangular roof, the icing dried too slowly and most of the kids opted for the easier flat roof.

Before we started, I made 12 individual cups with some of each kind of candy: Twizzlers, Red Hots, those buttery dinner mints, individually wrapped peppermints, and gum drops. This way there was no fighting over candy because each participant had the exact same thing in their cup, and everyone had the same amount of icing (a powdered sugar/water mixture in baggies for easy piping) to decorate with. Check out their amazing creations!

The roof is a monster face eating candy!