Tesla Fest returns to Mid-America Science Museum on Saturday to celebrate Nikola Tesla's 165th birthday.
"This is our fifth annual Tesla Fest, which is fun. It is our annual celebration of Nikola Tesla's birthday. This one is extra fun and extra special because it is his 165th birthday, and Tesla Fest is actually on his birthday, not just the weekend of. He was born on July 10, 1856," Casey Wylie, director of education at the museum, said.
"Nikola Tesla matters because he actually was one of the greatest minds and one of the most influential inventors of our modern-day life, and he's unfortunately been forgotten, mostly because -- as we say in the Tesla show -- he was a man of science; he was a man of the people. He was all about the ideas and making society a better place. He wasn't very protective of his patents. In fact, sometimes he wasn't very good at getting a patent at all because it wasn't about being a business and making money for him," she said.
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"We want to remember and revere the mind and the work ethic and the kindness in some ways of Nikola Tesla," Wylie said.
The museum has several Tesla themed events planned, Wylie said, noting Richard Mathias, "our local Tesla expert, and the founding father of our Tesla coil will be coming and ... adding on to our normal Tesla shows at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., he'll be doing a demonstration of his little hand-built musical Tesla coil, as well as offering a Q and A session."
"It's always good to learn from a master," Wylie said of Mathias.
There will also be Tesla-themed activities in the Alliance Rubber Company Tinkering Studio.
"We'll be looking at Snap Circuits, which is an easy way to learn about electricity and circuitry," Wylie said. "We'll have Cubelets, which is a very simple, block-based robot."
"Tesla was actually one of the first people to have any interest in robotics," Wylie said.
"One of Tesla's most famous, and long-lasting, inventions was the AC turbine generators he used to harness the power of Niagara Falls, and so we'll be making model turbines using Tinker Toys -- otherwise known as windmills," Wylie said.
"And his invention and design of turbines is the same basic system that they still use, even in the modern dams around here at Remmel and Blakely," she added.
Wylie said children learning about these topics is important. "They need to know how did these ideas come about. Science isn't magic. Magic is just a term for science we can't explain yet," she said.
