Splash Spring 2024
Course Catalog

Has grandma's crocheting ever interest you? Do you ever want to be just like her? Come join us to learn the basics of crocheting and create your very own coaster!


Class Style
Workshop

Have you ever wanted to write a song, but didn't know where to start? This course will go over the basics of chord progression and lyrical analysis, granting you the ability to write good sounding, meaningful music.


Class Style
Group-Based

Do you have jokes bursting from your seems? Do you want more than anything for the external validation of a laughing crowd? Do you just like to giggle? Come join us (one of us, one of us)! We'll be learning how to construct a joke, how to place your jokes, how to appropriately deliver a joke, and much much more. We'll also be doing an exercise in class, so come prepared to be silly.


Class Style
Discussion

So many games sound fun, but end up being total snoozefests. Why are games so hard to make? In this class we'll make our own games while talking about what makes a game good, bad, or downright ugly.


Class Style
Workshop

Have you ever wanted to launch plastic babies with a slingshot/catapult/trebuchet that you’ve created on your own? Well, we're bringing back Bye Bye Baby once again so now's your chance! With a small team, you’ll then work to design and build your own unique baby launcher (with the power of physics). We’ll end the workshop with a fun competition.


Class Style
Workshop

Ever curious about the magic happening inside your phone or how intricate electronics come to life? Join us for a workshop where we unravel the wonders of electronics in the simplest manner. We'll dive into the fascinating world of batteries, LEDs, resistors, switches, and beyond.

After an introduction, you'll embark on a hands-on adventure in soldering where you'll craft and take home your very own electronics kit, a token of your newly acquired skill.

Whether you're a novice or just looking to refresh your knowledge, this workshop is crafted just for you. Join us for an engaging journey into the heart of electronics, no previous experience required!


Class Style
Workshop

We will compare scenes from both the Game of Thrones books and TV show to see how they took inspiration from real historical events and people.


Class Style
Presentation/Lecture

A class for anyone interested in learning more about the silly, yet useful rules we've. (Lesson four: you shouldn't end a sentence with a positive contraction like "we have." It sounds bizarre.)


Class Style
Presentation/Lecture

Maybe you want to show off some advanced grammar and technically perfect writing. Maybe you want to debate 'who' vs 'whom' or formally learn how to order your adjectives. Maybe you want to learn some additional grammar with a room of people who already know what a preposition is. (If you don't, that's okay!) Whatever the reasons are, come join a class that is definitely more fun than it sounds!


Class Style
Presentation/Lecture

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Man, programming is so cool, but I don’t even know where to start,” or have you ever felt like programming has been gate kept from you? Well, if you answered “yes” to either, great! And even if you answered “no” to either, learning programming is essential in today’s world. So why not get started with my SPLASH intro course in programming in Python? This course will be teaching the basics of basics of programming and Python, and will be the first step to you building the next ChatGPT or LLM model! So get started today and sign up. No prior knowledge is required! (Please bring your laptop if you can, but it is not required if you cannot).


Class Style
Workshop

Prerequisites
No prior knowledge necessary, however, please bring your laptop if possible (though not required)!

Come learn about what makes the internet tick, from websites, to apps, to games! We'll learn about how computers talk to each other, how websites work, and to be honest probably far too many acronyms* – a cheat sheet will be included :).

We'll also learn about some of the cybersecurity side. What does it actually mean for someone to know your IP address? How do people "hack" websites? Come and find out!

*Including but not limited to: IP, HTML/CSS/JS, HTTP/HTTPS, DNS, BGP, URLs, DDoS, XSRF, and XSS.


Class Style
Presentation/Lecture

Ever wanted to learn about how those silly little pictures on your phone work?.

Come learn about Unicode, an international standard for text that includes thousands of
characters from the simple letter "a", to the large and mysterious "𒈙", and even "👍".

We'll also learn about why emoji and Unicode tend to break everything, from invisible usernames to text messages that crash your phone.


Class Style
Presentation/Lecture

A set of people are each given a hat. They can see each other’s hats but not their own, and they all simultaneously guess their hat color or pass. They win if at least one person guesses correctly and nobody guesses incorrectly. What is the optimal strategy?

In this class, we’ll discuss how this puzzle is related to error correcting codes. Time permitting, we’ll talk about the mathematics of information, the power of redundancy, and how redundant English is.


Class Style
Presentation/Lecture

Prerequisites
Knowing what a logarithm is

Ever wonder how your eyes work? Interested in learning how different parts of your eyes function to help you see the world around you?

In this class we will discuss the basic anatomy and physiology of the eye, basic visual acuity testing, and find our blind spots! Then, we'll make 3D models of an human eyeball. There will be eye-themed snacks!


Class Style
Activity

Have you ever seen a taxidermy and wondered if it really used to be an animal? Or seen a brain in a glass jar and wondered why it's in all that liquid? In this class you will be learning about the wonderful world of biological collections, aka, how to preserve dead things. We will learn about taxidermies, fluid preserved specimens, dried specimens, and more, as well as all the work that is needed to maintain them.

Then- you will get a chance to make your own fluid preserved specimen! At the end of class you will take home your own bee in a jar, that should be well preserved for you to keep for many years to come!


Class Style
Activity

Have you ever wondered how a lava lamp works? We're going to be utilizing the concepts of both chemistry and physics to develop our own DIY mason jar lava lamps!


Class Style
Workshop

It's time to put both your mind and arms to use and create your own DIY butter! Learn the science it takes to develop butter from cream and have an opportunity to make your own butter from scratch (and potentially enjoy some sweets with it as well)


Class Style
Workshop

Did you just see Avatar 2 and spend way too much time afterwards thinking about how the Pandoran ecosystem works? Ever get sad about the fascinating lives of dinosaurs that we’ll never truly know about? Have you ever looked at a monkey and wondered how two creatures could become so different in 10 million years, how different would we look in another 10 million years?

This class will not answer any of these questions. Instead, YOU will be the one who creates the answers. In this class you will learn about the speculative evolution movement and experience the works of other artists involved. The next step is for you to get involved! You can choose a scenario and create your own creature, based in real life biology, and bring it to life on paper or through playdough. Then you will have a chance to share your creature with the rest of the class.

So, consider it. What if you left a population of just canaries on a habitable moon? How could a human evolve to live in the vacuum of space? And why can’t we find any remains of the ancient dinosaur civilizations? That is for you to decide.


Class Style
Activity

What's the difference between a con and a scam? Are all cons inherently bad? Come learn how to think your way through some of history's best cons, and avoid falling for the future ones!

Alternatively: step right on up, folks, and learn how to pull off a good prank.


Class Style
Presentation/Lecture

Let's be real, the conspiracy theorists got one thing right: everyone is trying to manipulate you. Uncovering the truth about the world requires research, but research is a lot more complicated than clicking articles on Facebook. This class goes over bias, how research actually works, and how to find the truth about real world issues.


Class Style
Discussion