Bring a snowball to Carnegie Science Center and save money on admission

Over the winter the Carnegie Science Center encourages people to save snowballs in their freezers for its annual Snowball Day on the first day of summer – and each year, many do.

Now comes the payoff.

Since 2006, the Science Center has celebrated the solstice by helping visitors launch those snowballs into the Ohio River. This year’s Snowball Day is set for June 21, and general admission will be just $5 on that day.

The event is expected to bring in some 1,500 people carrying snowballs in coolers, freezer bags and plastic storage containers, among other vessels. They will then use slingshots and other methods to send their snowballs to a watery demise.

Why? Well, because it’s fun. But there’s also a science lesson in all this.

“They have to figure out a way to insulate their snowballs and keep them from melting on the drive over,” said Brad Peroney, Carnegie Science Center program director. “And they get to explore the science of physics of how snowballs follow a flight path into the river and how liquids can change from a solid back to a liquid again.”

Connie George, Carnegie Science Center senior director of marketing, said it’s an event that families put on their calendars every year.

“We get people coming from all over – Erie, West Virginia and Ohio – and it’s become a tradition for celebrating the first day of summer,” she said.

Aside from using the catapult that is used to launch the snowballs, participants can discover engineering skills they might not have known they had by building their own catapults.

“We’re going to make catapults with some common everyday materials like craft sticks and rubber bands and spoons so that we can launch mini marshmallows and land them in a target, and explore some of the science around heat insulators and heat conductors and how materials can protect ice or snow from melting or encourage them to melt more quickly,” Peroney said.

People can also learn about the states of matter and witness the effects of liquid nitrogen at a “Freeze! Show” and for an additional cost, see “The Search for Snow” in The Rangos Giant Cinema.

For more information, visit CarnegieScienceCenter.org or call 412-237-3400.