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'Messfest': Kids Have Fun With Chaos At Carnegie Science Center

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Budding engineers at Carnegie Science Center carefully pack eggs, for the purpose of zipping them down a zipline.

The Science Center's Jill Rible explains: "Everybody's presented with packing materials. They've got things that they can wrap around them. They've got things that they can put in there to pad it. And the whole idea is - can you engineer something so that when we send it hurtling two stories down a zipline, and that egg is going to survive at the end."

And if it doesn't, well, that's why they call this annual event "Messfest."

"They get their year started with science, but they're having so much fun, they're not really aware of all the learning that's going on," Rible says.

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It doesn't get any messier than the pie eating contest. Actually, that's "pi" as in "pi r squared." But kids gobbling pudding weren't thinking about math at the moment.

According to the winner, 12-year-old Bryce Brody, "I didn't really have a technique. I just tried to eat fast, and it really got messy."

Even parents gave it a shot.

"You have to open your mouth as wide as you can," says the bearded, 13-and-older champ Micah Galvas. "And shift it toward your mouth with beard and mustache."

Shades of Dr. Seuss! Kids also plunged their hands into gooey vats of "ooblek."

"If you squish it in your hand, it's kind of solid," Rible says, "If you hit it, it's pretty solid. But then, if you release it, it becomes sort of liquid."

Fortunately, it's not "glueblek." It does wash off.

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