Today was our first morning in our NY hotel, the Comfort Inn. Although some people overslept, we eventually got down to breakfast. This food was not quite as good as in the hotel in Washington D.C. , but it still had some good bagels, eggs, and waffles. From the hotel, we traveled on the subway to the New York State Historical Society on 77th Street. Here, we learned about stage design from Mr. Patterson’s brother.

He had been part of the design of the theater in the Historical Society, and told us about the many obstacles that you can face during the creation of a theater. The amount of thought and pre-design that go into even just the blueprints amazed me. We then watched a movie about the History of New York in the same theater. After this, our group went to Central Park.

After wandering around Central Park for quite a while, we decided to eat lunch at Five Guys, which was a ways away. To get to our 3:30 meeting, Francis, our navigator, led us around the city in order to get to The Cooper Union. Since we got there near 2:30, just a little early (wink, wink), Mrs. Newland found an open Café for us to write and reflect in. Near the end of our time in the Café, Mrs. Newland had us do a thinking exercise to clear our thoughts, and then we returned to Cooper Union. The Cooper Union building was large, and had an interesting design, which we discussed as we walked to the Invention Factory’s room.

There, twenty people, split into ten teams of two, were building inventions that would compete for a monetary reward. Even though we were going to look in on some of the students’ presentations later, all the groups gave us a brief explanation of their product. There was a fire extinguishing sphere, an adjustable longboard, a smart bookmark, a hearing system, a balance training device, an easy edge cover for a table, a musical toy, a suture-applying machine, and a few others. After hearing these brief descriptions, and sticking our hands in a mix of water and corn starch (Oobleck), we sat down to listen to a few of them give presentations. Most of them were well received by the audience of reviewers (which included Mrs. Newland), except for the smart bookmark because of its less practical use. Because we were all tired, we decided to order food from Mr. Patterson’s room, and we almost all got chicken fingers. Returning afterwards to our own rooms, we each prepared for the long train ride ahead…