Splash Biography

They're all around us, but what do you really know about plants? Come learn more about how plants get energy and nutrients, and why they are such an important part of our world. You'll even get the chance to learn how to grow your own indoor plants and take home your own herb garden!

Reading is a passive experience, right? Not if you're reading hypertext fiction! Hypertext is a genre that give the reader as much control over the story as the writer has. We'll explore hypertext literature disguised as games, puzzles, and linked webpages, and even try our hand at writing our own hypertext stories!

Have you ever wanted to write a song parody like Weird Al does? Of course you have! So bring in something to sing about, and let's make it happen! Along the way we'll pick up some tidbits about rhyme, meter, and singable words—which are of course applicable to much more than song parodies. Ability to sing is not required.

Thanks to recent developments in biotechnology, scientists have produced tomatoes that don't rot, corn resistant to drought and herbicides, and extra-nutritious high-yield rice. These technologies hold tremendous promise for feeding the world in an era of climate change and growing populations--yet public acceptance is a long ways away. Come dissect the debate, and learn a little anthropology on the way.

Three stacked bars of color painted on a red background. Thinly mixed paint poured across a canvas. A huge, menacing black cube. The art of the last century can seem silly at first glance, but once you understand the theory behind it, whole new ways of looking at art--and the world--emerge. Come learn about the ideas and brushstrokes that have shaped the last century, and find out whether or not painting really is dead!

What is the relationship between language and thought? Do the words we use to speak and form our thoughts shape the kinds of thoughts we are able to think? Could a language’s lack of past or future tense indicate anything about the way its speakers perceive time? Or do these questions fail to acknowledge the fact that languages are created by humans, humans who all think and experience their individual worlds in basically the same way? This debate has ignited much controversy in the world of linguistics. By looking at work done on Hopi, Hawaiian Creole English, Yucatec Maya and the Amazonian language Pirahã, we will get a sense of the arguments for both sides and the current consensus of the linguistic community.