The Scarlet Kinght

Catch a Scarlet Knights football game and help people still recovering from Hurricane Sandy on Rutgers Day.

Admission to the Scarlet-White spring football game remains free for everyone, but all Rutgers fans can make a $5 donation to the Hurricane Sandy New Jersey Relief Fund upon entering High Point Solutions Stadium on the Busch Campus on Rutgers Day. Kickoff is at 3 p.m.

The Scarlet Knights will wear special ‘R strong’ helmets and jerseys including the names of 90 New Jersey towns that were affected by Hurricane Sandy. The jerseys will be signed by Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood and presented to each town over the summer.

“R strong” gear for the Scarlet- White game on Rutgers Day.

Before the scrimmage, two teams of former Rutgers football players will take the field for the third annual Believe Bowl, an exhibition flag football game to raise awareness and support for spinal cord research at the university. The game is played annually in honor of Eric LeGrand, who suffered a severe spinal injury and became paralyzed while making a tackle in an October 2010 game against the Army Black Knights.

Former Scarlet Knights football players, including current NFL stars, will be present to sign autographs before the Believe Bowl. Stick around after the Scarlet-White football game and get autographs from our current players.

Fans who can’t make it to the stadium may view the game live via ScarletKnights.com or tune into Rutgers Radio Network – WOR 710 AM in New York City, WCTC 1450 AM in Central New Jersey and 97.5 FM The Fanatic in Philadelphia and South Jersey – for game calls by LeGrand, Chris Carlin, Ray Lucas and Anthony Fucilli.

Budding scientists and technology aficionados will find no shortage of demonstrations and hands-on activities on the Busch Campus this Rutgers Day.

Busch Campus is home to the annual Engineering Open House and boasts dozens of interactive events all day long. You can see how engineers make ice cream using liquid nitrogen, or watch glass blown into cool objects. Fly high with a flight simulation program to get a sense of how planes work, or if you’d rather stay close to the ground, check out a formula race car built and driven by Rutgers students and a solar car which runs completely on energy from the sun.

If you love robots, be sure to check out the Rutgers Navigator, a robot designed and programmed by students. It can maneuver an outdoor obstacle course using its own computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Finally, chemistry professors perform exciting experiments designed to entice scientific curiosity in all ages. See the principles covered in chemistry classes brought to life. My tip? Get there early because space is limited. Watch explosions and other chemistry in action, all at Rutgers Day.

Bubbles of all sizes will fill the air on Rutgers Day.

“Walk the Dog” and “Sleeper?” Sooooo last year. Come to Busch Campus on Rutgers Day to master the latest yoyo tricks, with a little help from Rutgers Yo-Yo Dojo. It’s one of many hands-on activities that make the event a blast for the under-12 set. (Parents surely won’t mind a few brush-up lessons, either.)

Create paper cranes, flowers and boxes – and be sure to take them home to show your friends – courtesy of Rutgers’ Asian Student Council tent on the Voorhees Mall on College Avenue. More musically inclined? Build a harmonica out of tongue depressors, tape and rubber bands. You’ll find the materials and necessary instructions at the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund tent on College Avenue.

In love with Legos? Stop by the tent run by the Rutgers-Newark Office of Communications, also on Voorhees Mall , to re-create the Rutgers-Newark campus out of green, yellow and red plastic blocks. Additional kid-friendly fun will be featured at the Life Sciences area on Busch, where friends of the Rutgers-Livingston Day Care Center will fill the Rutgers sky with a bubble bonanza.

Really, who doesn’t love bubbles?

Still on the Busch Campus, would-be “skeleton detectives” will become forensic anthropologists to identify the gender and ethnicity of skulls, thanks to the Office of Undergraduate Education. If you’re heading for Cook/Douglass Campus, check out “Dig It!” where a team from the Plant Diagnostic and Soil Testing Service will help you get your hands dirty and crawl through tunnels to explore what’s underground in our fragile ecosystem.

And that’s just a small taste of what awaits kids (and grown-ups) at Rutgers Day this year!

More than 75,000 people attended Rutgers Day in 2011 and 2012.

Mark your calendar for Rutgers Day on April 27.

The university’s annual show-and-tell for the state’s residents promises something for everyone with nearly 500 programs. Stop by the Master Gardener Plant sale early for your pick of the hundreds of varieties of heirloom tomatoes, herbs and flowers.

Don’t miss the new Rutgers Day parade at 11 a.m. on the College Avenue Campus. Floats, jugglers, swing dancers and even a Quidditch team will parade down College Avenue. Visit the Rutgers Oral History Archives on the Voorhees Mall to share your story from Superstorm Sandy or listen to interviews from others affected by the storm.

We will be providing you the latest news and information on this blog in the weeks leading up to the big day. We’ll specifically highlight programs for children, sports fans, animal lovers and fans of the theater. Be sure to return frequently so you can plan your day.

In the meantime, visit our Meet the Bloggers section to find out about our team. Or check out the Rutgers Day website for more information on programming.

You can also read our news release for more specific information about activities on each campus. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

See you there!

We hope you had a good time at Rutgers Day 2012.

Check out our blog posts on everything from fire safety demonstrations to the petting zoo. And watch the video highlights from RU-tv.

We’ll see you next year.

It was a dramatic demonstration of how fire sprinklers save lives. Two mockups of dorm rooms were set up on a service drive next to the Busch Campus Center, one equipped with a single sprinkler head, the other without.

Mock dorm room without sprinklers is engulfed in flames three minutes after a wastebasket full of paper ignited.

The mock dorm room without the sprinkler became engulfed in flames a few minutes after firefighters ignited a wastebasket full of paper, simulating what might happen if a cigarette, candle or spark landed in the basket. Firefighters from Piscataway’s River Road Fire Company, participating in the demonstration, extinguished the conflagration after three minutes.

In the room with the sprinkler head, water started flowing less than a minute after the fire ignited. Firefighters were able to pull the smoldering wastebasket out of the room and wet it down. Other than some smoke and water, the contents of the mock room remained unburned.

In the room protected by a sprinkler head, the fire doesn't spread beyond the wastebasket.

“New Jersey is the first state to require dorms to be fully sprinklered,” said Dave Kurasz, executive director of the New Jersey Fire Sprinkler Advisory Board, a trade association. “Most states do not require it, but a lot are getting on board now.” He recalled the Seton Hall dorm fire of 2000 where three students lost their lives as the event that prodded New Jersey to act.

Oliver Grasberger, 3, visits the petting zoo at Rutgers Day

Get your dose of cuteness and get in touch with the university’s agricultural roots visiting the animals on Cook Campus during Rutgers Day. Check out the equestrian activities in the barn area and visit the piglets, which are always a big draw.

“They are so cute they remind everyone of puppies,’’ said Candice Perez, a junior animal science major.

Learn about Rutgers Seeing Eye Puppy Raisers and watch the 4-H dog show on Skelley Field. Try to catch a show of the animal handling, fitting and exhibition class with their goats and sheep. Then bring your children to the petting zoo where they can get up close to a two-month old lamb and two-week old piglets.

After a visit to the petting zoo with their children, Elisabeth Grasberger and her husband Andrew Dorman, both Rutgers Alum, said they love returning to Rutgers Day and sharing their memories of the university.

“It’s nice to bring our children back and say this is where we graduated,’’ said Elisabeth Grasberger.

Leave it to civil engineers – they take a heavy substance like concrete and make it float.

Of course, there’s a special formula … glass beads.

Substitute glass for the typical gravel and sand that you typically blend with Portland cement and you have concrete that is one-third the weight of conventional concrete, explained Zeeshan Ghanchi, a junior civil and environmental engineering student and captain of the Rutgers concrete canoe team. Cast it in the shape of a canoe and it floats.

Concrete canoe team members, behind canoe from left, Jamie Lesko, Zeeshan Ghanchi and Timothy Enny show their lightweight watercraft to Rutgers Day visitors.

“This is the lightest canoe we’ve made,” said Jamie Lesko, a senior civil and environmental engineering student and co-captain of the Rutgers concrete canoe team. Built in a School of Engineering laboratory, it has wire embedded in it that runs the length of the canoe, which contributes to the canoe’s strength.

Lesko said the team won second place in a regional competition in Denville April 21 and 22, and is hoping to receive an invitation to the national championships in Reno, Nevada, in mid-June.

There’s more to the competition than keeping the concrete boat afloat and crossing the finish line first. The team needs a compelling theme. The Rutgers engineers chose “The Jersey Devil,” named after a popular mythical Pinelands creature. Rivers in the Pine Barrens also happen to be a popular canoeing venue.

Master Cheng delights children with the whimsy of his intricate designs at the booth run by the Asian American Student Center.

Two-year-old Adriana Dior of Jamesburg is waaaay too busy devouring a chocolate cupcake to share her thoughts on Rutgers Day – her first. But her mom, Shakerah, says the little girl is loving the puppet shows, storybook readings and face painting activities on College Avenue.

Drawn by recommendations from her boss and highway signs advertising the day, the elder Dior says the day’s hundreds of events have something to offer kids of all ages.

And maybe, just maybe, Adriana will wind up at Rutgers some day, Shakerah suggests. “She’s already got the letter painted on her cheek …” she laughs.

Nearby, 5½ -year-old Isabella Ayres is wielding blue marker golden glitter to good effect on a stylized paper R to add to the colorful R-Garden that has drawn thousands to the center of Voorhees Mall.

She’s here with mom, Dr. Cynthia Ayres, a professor in the Rutgers College of Nursing, who has been bringing the family to Rutgers since its inception in 2009. Ayres says Isabella and her sister, Madelyn, 16 months, have been enjoying the sand art and the coloring projects the best.

A short way down the mall, Master Cheng, paper cutter extraordinaire, is captivating kids and adults alike at the booth run by the Asian American Cultural Center.

Dozens of children watch, open-mouthed, as his hands fly and his creations emerge. Faster than you can say “Rutgers Day,” white paper plates become whimsical hats – look, isn’t that one Sponge Bob?  

If you hurry over, we’re sure he’ll make one especially for you … or your child.

School groups enjoy visiting Rutgers Day, including 130 students from Smalley Middle School in nearby Bound Brook. This is the third time that sixth-grade math teacher Joe Santicerma has brought students to Rutgers Day, and, as a math teacher might say, his groups have grown exponentially.

“In the first year, we had maybe 20 kids – half a bus,” he said. “Then last year, we had 90.”

Sixth-grade math teacher Joe Santicerma, background center, and middle school students from Bound Brook catch some rays with solar cells in the engineering area on the Busch Campus.

Santicerma and his teaching and guidance colleagues are trying to get their students thinking about college early.

“Our focus is to inspire them,” he said. “Rutgers Day and the Scarlet-White Football Game provide the perfect venue for our students to experience college academic programs and departments, as well as extracurricular activities.”

An activity like Rutgers day also helps young students relate to their teachers and sparks their interest in learning

“You have a nice rapport with students when they see you outside the school environment,” Santicerma said. “It makes them eager to do well in class.”

The students enjoyed lunch in the Busch Dining Hall, visited exhibits in the stadium and engineering areas, and finished their day watching football.

“I enjoy bringing them to Rutgers, since I’m an alumnus,” he proudly said.