July 4: Independence Day. Get your picnic blanket and a good spot to watch strontium nitrate, aluminum and copper(II) oxide in action — these metal salts produce fireworks’ red, white and blue colors.
July 10:International Nikola Tesla Day. Join fellow geeks around the globe as they salute the supergenius whose inventions basically made our modern world. Take that, Tommy Edison.
July 17: Turbo Release. According to DreamWorks’ latest flick, the trick to turning a snail into an Indy 500 champ is a quick bath in nitrous oxide. Don’t try this at home.
July 19-21:Da Vinci Days. Contestants in the kinetic sculpture race in Corvallis, Ore., pedal feats of art and engineering through street, sand dune, mud and river.
July 24-25:Suits That Compute! New York City's Wearable Tech Expo features hands-on demos of future products. Hey, does this USB port make me look fat?
July 27-August 5:7th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics. High school students from more than 30 countries vie to calculate faster, higher, stronger at the annual competition in Volos, Greece.
August 2 & 4: Diver Down!Learn to scuba dive as part of the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium Festival of Water.
August 6 & 9:Dawn of the Atomic Age. In 1945, the U.S. became the only country to use the nuclear bomb in warfare, annihilating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
August 10-11: Bug Bash! Cheer your favorite cockroach to victory in the Roach Race 500 at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences Bug Fest.
August 11-12: Perseids Peak. Thanks to an early moonset on the evening of the 11th, this year’s Perseid meteor shower should be a stunner in the early hours of the 12th.
Commence Summer Reading! Fire up your child’s imagination with the best science books for grades K-12, handpicked by the National Science Teachers Association.
