Join Us for Maryland Day on Saturday, April 27!
The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences will host 32 events
Join us for the 21th annual Maryland Day to explore our world of fearless ideas on Saturday, April 27, 2019, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Maryland Day is an exciting opportunity for prospective students and area residents to learn more about the University of Maryland. There will be hundreds of festivities including exhibits, workshops, hands-on demonstrations, performances, cross-campus tours, lectures, petting zoos and athletic events.
Maryland Day will be held rain or shine. Admission and parking are free. A campus map can be found here.
We hope you’ll join the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences on Science & Tech Way for the 32 events listed below! To view the full day’s schedule, please visit the Maryland Day website.
Biology-Psychology Building
- Maryland Wildlife Quest – Outside, all day
- Explore the wildlife of Maryland and contribute to a Chesapeake Bay and Appalachian Mountains mural.
Bioscience Research Building
- Chemistry Magic – Front Entrance, all day
- Have fun watching the chemists of Alpha Chi Sigma play. Can you shatter a rubber ball? Make putty? Will you see magic or chemistry? This looks to be one explosive event.
- Chemists Celebrate Earth Day – Front Entrance, all day
- The UMD student chapter of the American Chemical Society hosts activities to tell visitors all about green chemistry.
- Microbe Madness – all day
- Join UMD microbiologists in making your very own, one-of-a-kind microbe button. Pick out your favorite microbe template and color it in, then watch as it turns into a unique and wearable pin.
- Race to Recycle – all day
- Race to separate a bunch of clean waste products into trash, recycling and compost. It’s a fun and educational activity on our green campus.
- The Everyday Extraordinary – Front Entrance, all day
- Students of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology demonstrate how common household items reveal important scientific phenomena.
Chemistry Building
- Chemathon: Chemistry of the Atmosphere – 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
- Watch 300 high school students from across the Washington, D.C. area compete in lab work, posters, written classwork and trivia under the theme of “Chemistry of the Atmosphere.”
Geology Building
- Fossil Dig – Outside, all day
- Dig in the Department of Geology sand pit and uncover millions of years of history. Find fossils up to 400 million years old and, of course, shark teeth.
- Minerals and the Earth: The Stuff of Life – all day
- See and touch pieces of the planet’s insides and meteorites, too. These minerals, rocks and gems are the raw materials of life.
Glenn L. Martin Hall
- Ask an Astronomer – Front Lawn, all day
- Astronomy faculty members and students answer your perplexing astronomy-related questions.
- Climate and Life Through Time – Front Lawn, all day
- See rocks, tree cores, and corals that tell us about climate and environments in the recent past and long ago at the one-of-a-kind Stable Isotope Laboratory’s interactive display.
- Earth System Science and Climate Change – Front Lawn, all day
- Explore our planet with Earth system scientists from the university, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Participate in educational and entertaining Earth science activities. Find out how much water you can “squeeze” from a cloud and learn about lightning and flash-flood safety from NOAA's interactive displays. Use virtual reality goggles and Magic Planet to view NASA and NOAA images.
- Fingerprinting the Universe – Front Lawn, all day
- Each person has a unique fingerprint. Each chemical element in our bodies and the universe also has a unique fingerprint that is encoded in light. Learn how astronomers study the skies using different wavelengths of light and how they decode the light to unravel the mysteries of the universe.
- Into the Micro-verse – Front Lawn, all day
- Explore what microbes live in, on and around us. How do we explore the diversity of these bugs using computers? And how are these organisms being used as therapeutics?
- Looking Into the Cosmos – Front Lawn, all day
- Join the AstroTerps to explore the familiar and not-so-familiar sights of the universe. How many can you identify?
- Maryland’s Weather and Climate – Front Lawn, all day
- Learn about Maryland's weather and how the materials we use to build cities makes where we live hotter, and play with a tornado in a bottle.
- Our Neighbor, NASA Goddard – Front Lawn, all day
- Around the corner and around the galaxy: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, five miles away in Greenbelt, builds spacecraft and instruments, and invents technology to study Earth, the sun, the solar system, and the universe. Discover how its mission affects you.
- Solar Observing – Front Lawn, all day
- Take a safe look at the big yellow (or red, depending on the filter) ball in our sky through telescopes with University of Maryland Observatory staff.
John S. Toll Physics Building
- Can You Move Like a Cell? – Front Lawn, all day
- Collective motion is important to cells of all types. Skin cells that move collectively are better at healing wounds. Immune cells that work together are better at detecting and eliminating infections. This interactive demonstration invites participants to move like a cell in games like “follow the leader” while a camera tracks them.
- Exploring Networks Across Scales – Front Lawn, all day
- Networks are everywhere: the internet, our brains and interactions between our favorite movie characters. Join members of UMD’s Computation and Mathematics for Biological Networks (COMBINE) program for an exploration of networks. Learn how networks are used to study phenomena we encounter in biology, physics, neuroscience and more.
- Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream – Front Lawn, 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
- Bet you haven’t had ice cream like this! This homemade specialty tastes great and is safe for all ages. Try it while supplies last.
- Physics is Phun – Front Lawn, 10 to 11 a.m. and 2 to 4 p.m.
- Physics is the science of how everything around us works, from fastballs to lasers, from stars in deep space to the phone in your pocket. Join students and faculty for fantastic physics demonstrations and check out some of the tools that physicists use to explore and understand the universe.
- Physics Makerspace Tours – Physics Welding Shop, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the hour
- Physics makers will host tours on the hour in the physics makerspace, Vortex. The tours include interactive activities for children of all ages.
- Radar Velocity – Front Lawn, all day
- Test your throwing ability at the Radar Velocity Detector Station.
- Smoke Cannons – Front Lawn, all day
- Two cannons make for amazing motion when rings collide.
- Think Quantum: Magnetic Levitation – Front Lawn, all day
- See levitating superconductors, cooled by liquid nitrogen, zoom around a magnetic track.
Plant Sciences Building
- Discover a Swamp – 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Capture and observe the small aquatic creatures that are common in nearby wetlands. Learn about their behavior as they swim through water and climb on plants.
- Explore Life Questions with Biology Answers – all day
- Who attacked Testudo? Crack the genetic code with a DNA bracelet. See how fast your brain can think. Explore human evolution by examining fossil skulls.
- Insect Petting Zoo – 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Imagine tarantulas, exotic insects, scorpions, bees, and millipedes longer than your hand for you to look at and touch—if you dare.
- Watch Out for that SUN! – all day
- Let the UMD Pre-Medical Society teach you about sunscreen and avoiding skin cancer.
The Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering
- Coding Games with CompSciConnect – 2 to 4 p.m.
- Come discover computing with middle school students in UMD's CompSciConnect program and learn how to program LEGO Mindstorm robots, create games in Scratch, and explore number systems and cryptology. Virtual reality and Scratch games created by students will be on display.
- Brendan Iribe Center Open House – 2 to 4 p.m.
- Visit the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, a new hub for research and innovation in virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, robotics, algorithms, programming languages and systems, and computer vision. The center’s grand opening is on Maryland Day!
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Media Relations Contact: Irene Ying, 301-405-5204, zying@umd.edu
University of Maryland
College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
2300 Symons Hall
College Park, MD 20742
www.cmns.umd.edu
@UMDscience
About the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences
The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland educates more than 9,000 future scientific leaders in its undergraduate and graduate programs each year. The college’s 10 departments and more than a dozen interdisciplinary research centers foster scientific discovery with annual sponsored research funding exceeding $175 million.