by Dot Cannon
Creativity, professionalism and a sense of fun shone throughout the Anaheim Ducks’ all-virtual “First Flight Field Trip” on Wednesday.
And even technical glitches couldn’t dull the brightness.
As part of their unique S.C.O.R.E. educational program, the Anaheim Ducks Hockey Club hosts an annual field trip for grades three through six. (S.C.O.R.E. is an acronym, for “Scholastic Curriculum of Recreation and Education”.)
Every year, for First Flight, the Ducks demonstrate a hockey-related scientific principle. They involve their visitors in a show, with interaction by Ducks players, First Flight host Sammy Donado, First Flight DJ Jojo Maestrado, various Ducks staffers…
…and, of course, the Ducks’ mascot, Wild Wing, does a star turn.
The event is completely free. Free workbooks are provided, ahead of time, to registered classrooms. In past years, the onsite “First Flight Field Trip” has “sold out” early, and played to a capacity crowd.
Due to the pandemic, this year, for the first time, the field trip was completely virtual: hosted on the Ducks’ “Flying V Experience” video platform.
And the all-virtual format allowed a much larger audience to participate.
In our previous conversation, Anaheim Ducks Manager of Fan Development Marketing Jason Cooper said that participants were joining the session, virtually, from classrooms as far away as France. And we saw more than 1,500 guests on the live counter durng this year’s virtual event.
However, that number may be low.
Jason emails that this year, there were 2,000 account registrations. And while some students accessed the broadcast through a personal laptop or tablet, many classrooms watch through ONE computer or projector.
“We won’t know a true count, but we assume it was in the neighborhood of 8 to 9,000 total viewers,” he says.
This year’s theme: “Cool Like Ice”, about the science behind skate-able ice.
And the Ducks presented it in a fun and gamified format.
A premise and a predicament
The show started with a dramatized, tongue-in-cheek dilemma.
In his normal duties, Ducks’ Chief Ice Engineer Kevin Diamond supposedly falls on the ice. Overhearing staffers’ conversation, Ducks mascot Wild Wing concludes that Kevin has broken his leg and no one else is available to prepare the ice for the Ducks’ upcoming game.
Accordingly, Wild Wing decides he will step in to perform this task. He dashes off to alert Sammy in his studio.
After a minor mishap, the two then recruit Jojo…
…and the visiting students in their classrooms–to help them get ready in time.
But in order to do so, they have some research to do.
Four different stages of preparation ensue. Each is actually a mini-lesson, approximately ten minutes long, covering a scientific principle about ice.
STEAM, hockey-style
The three states of matter, the nature of heat, the physics of ice, and finally, how and why the ice is prepared for the Ducks to skate, were the topics Sammy and Wing explored with various hockey players.
Between lessons, Jojo asked the audience trivia questions about hockey. (Who knew that the first indoor hockey game was played in Montreal?)
With his high-energy delivery and sense of humor, Jojo managed to make quiz questions feel much more like a game show than a lesson to be learned. And prizes were at stake!
Lesson 1: What’s the matter
Meanwhile, from Irvine’s Great Park Ice, the Ducks’ practice facility, Sammy and Wild Wing were exploring some physics. The subject: the three states of matter, as applied to ice.
“We got some experts over here that are going to teach us a thing or two about ice,” Sammy said, as Ducks players Troy Terry, Kevin Shattenkirk and John Gibson appeared.
Each displayed ice in one of the three matter stages, and talked about that substance’s properties.
“(This) looks like steam,” Troy commented. “It’s hot, it’s moving everywhere and I’m pretty sure this is some type of gas.”
Then, each player related the way they moved on the ice, to the ways heat changes matter.
“We’re pretty similar to molecules in that way,” Troy said. “Heat plays an important part in movement.”
“Icy” hands-on research
And heat was the topic of the next mini-lesson.
“Heat is even passing through the ice,” Sammy commented. “Heat passes between objects.”
Sammy, Wild Wing and Ducks center Trevor Zegras then demonstrated the passage of heat in a particularly delicious way. They made vanilla ice cream!
How did this demonstrate that principle? Well, the ice cream mixture was just above forty degrees as Trevor stirred it. Meanwhile, the marble surface on which Trevor, Sammy and Wild Wing was working was just over twenty.
“The workbook says that matter with more heat will pass into other objects until they equal one another’s temperature,” Sammy said.
The ice cream froze, and Sammy checked the new temperature of the mixture.
“It says, twenty-three, twenty-four,” he reported.
“I’m telling you, you better bring me some ice cream on (your) way back,” Jojo teased.
And as the Anaheim Ducks’ S.C.O.R.E. program’s first-ever all-virtual “First Flight Field Trip” continued, lessons on ice physics and smoothness, along with more trivia and takeaways, were still to come.