NASA Invites Elementary-aged Children and Families to Gear Up For Free Day of Engineering

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Feb 14, 2012, 09:47 ET

GREENBELT, Md., Feb. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Md. will host this month's Sunday Experiment on Sunday, February 19 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST. It's a free afternoon with an intriguing look inside NASA Engineering for elementary school-aged children and their families.

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In honor of engineering week, February's Sunday Experiment will focus on light and optics. Much of what we know about our solar system, our Milky Way Galaxy, and our universe comes from light traveling from these far-away places and arriving at Earth. Hands-on activities will teach children how instruments built at the Goddard Space Flight Center use optics to unlock the secrets carried in this light, by taking pictures (forming images using reflection and refraction) spreading light into a rainbow (using dispersion & diffraction), and measuring the light's polarization.

Children will partake in hands-on activities and learn about NASA's engineering. This month's Sunday Experiment promises to be an educational experience that will have your little one excited about all things science and engineering.

As always, the Visitor Center's Science on a Sphere theater will offer insight to Goddard's cutting edge science and research.

The Sunday Experiment, held the third Sunday of each month, spotlights Goddard's world-renowned science and engineering research and technological developments. Families leave inspired by the activities, wowed by the scientists and engineers, and excited about Goddard's revolutionary research and technology. In addition to celebrating all things science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the Sunday Experiment celebrates major science missions that are managed by NASA Goddard and set to launch in the near future.

For more information on the Sunday Experiment, visit Goddard's Visitor Center Web page:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/events/index.html

For more information and directions to the NASA Goddard Visitor's Center, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/home/faq.html

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/directions/index.html

SOURCE NASA