Chemistry Everyday for Everyone edited by
Chemistry for Kids
John T. Moore
Stephen F. Austin State University Nacogdoches, TX 75962
Science for Kids Outreach Programs: College Students Teaching Science to Elementary School Students and Their Parents
David Tolar
R. C Fisher School Athens, TX 75751
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Birgit G. Koehler, Lee Y. Park, and Lawrence J. Kaplan Department of Chemistry, Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267
For a number of years we have been organizing and teaching a special outreach course during our Winter Study Program (the month of January) here at Williams College. Originally the course was called “Science on the Road”, but recently it has been reorganized and renamed “Science for Kids”. Under the new format, college students plan, develop, and present hands-on workshops to fourth-grade students and their parents, with faculty providing logistical support and pedagogical advice. Recent topics have been “Forensic Science”, “Electricity and Magnetism”, “Chemistry and Cooking”, “Waves”, “Natural Disasters”, “Liquids”, “Pressure”, “Color and Light”, “Momentum and Inertia”, “Illusions”, and “The Senses”. This program has been a great success for all involved: the college students gain an insight into an aspect of science and what it takes to develop and teach that topic, the elementary school students get a chance to participate in an exciting and challenging scientific exploration, and the parents have a chance to learn a bit of science while spending time working on projects with their children. We provide here an overview of the pedagogical aims of our current approach and a sense of the time-line for putting together such a program within a month. In this article, the word “students” is reserved for the college students and the word “kids” refers to the fourth graders. Science on the Road The original format of our January term outreach course, Science on the Road, was similar in concept to other highly successful “science on wheels” programs (1–8) and other outreach programs (9–17 ) that have been reported. Our students spent three to four weeks designing science presentations for the elementary and high school levels, then carried out the presentations during class periods at the local schools. The advantage of this format was that the whole class and the teachers saw the presentation together and could, therefore, build upon the scientific concepts in future classes. However, a number of drawbacks were associated with this format as well: the need to work around the schedules of the different teachers, the relatively short time periods that could be allotted for such a presentation during a regular school day, and the difficulties involved in transporting equipment and supplies. The end result of these drawbacks was that it was impossible to make use of larger equipment or to provide much in the way of hands-on experience; the presentations were essentially short lectures illustrated with interesting demonstrations.
Figure 1. Kid and parent collaboration. Mapping the tongue for sensitivity to different tastes such as sour and bitter. (Courtesy of Joel Librizzi, Berkshire Eagle, reprinted with permission.)
Science for Kids Our revised (and current) format for our January-term outreach program was developed to address many of the concerns mentioned above and to provide a somewhat different focus. The first important decision was to target a very specific age range. It is well known that relatively young children have a great deal of inherent scientific curiosity (8, 18), but that a variety of factors tend to dampen this natural curiosity as early as the middle school years. We decided that 4th-grade children were at an ideal age. They have a sufficient attention span and sophistication to follow a description of a simple experiment or to understand explanations of different concepts, while at the same time being young enough to get excited about learning something new. In addition, we wanted our college students to act as “up-close” and realistic role models for the kids, and fourth-grade children are receptive to college students as role models in a way that older students might not be. Because we were interested in developing a very hands-on intensive program, we decided to bring the kids to campus on weekends for the workshops rather than having our students travel to their elementary schools on regular school days. This frees us from the constraints of the normal classroom schedule, allowing us to address individual topics in greater depth (our workshops are designed to run for about two hours each). Because we are able to use teaching laboratories at Williams College and because we no longer have to transport all our materials, we have the space and the materials readily available to provide the kids with a
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Tacoma Narrows Bridge movie Waveboard for standing and traveling waves with strobe light String and slinky waves Wavepool Oscilloscope and microphone Slide-whistles Tuning forks and strobe light Buzzer inside vacuum jar Size versus resonance tone: various-sized wooden sticks like xylophone (take home)
WAVES
Various exercises on floor, in chair, and against wall Push-cart Turntable for spinning fast and slow Table cloth pulled out from under dishes Seesaw
MOMENTUM, INERTIA, AND CENTER OF MASS
Volcano made from sand and bottle filled with baking soda, triggered with acetic acid Volcano from (NH4 )2 Cr2 O7 Atmospheric pressure to collapse soda cans Tornado in soda bottles (take home) van de Graaff generator
NATURAL DISASTERS
Immiscibility and density differences of several liquids Surface tension holds paper clip on water Atmospheric pressure to collapse soda cans Mixing volumes of water and alcohol Freezing point depression: string, salt, and ice cube Nonburning paper cup filled with water Slime (take home)
LIQUIDS
Yeast and rising dough Iodine starch test Litmus paper and cabbage-juice indicator for acids/bases Extraction of iron from fortified cereals Fat in food Emulsification of salad dressing with mustard
CHEMISTRY AND COOKING
Compass made from a needle and cork in cup of water Balloons and ping-pong balls for static electricity Bending a stream of water with static electricity Electroscope Magnetic fields demonstrated with iron filings van de Graaff generator
ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM
Collection of evidence at crime scene Ink analysis (chromatography, take home) Glass analysis (refractive indices) Hair analysis (SEM) Fingerprinting (take home inkless prints) (Artificial) blood analysis Fabric analysis
FORENSIC SCIENCE
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 76 No. 11 November 1999 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
COLOR AND LIGHT
Short presentation in college planetarium Slides of celestial objects Charts of astronomical time scales Lunar craters made by dropping pebbles in dishes of flour Phases of the moon; simulating solar and lunar eclipses with flashlights Assembly of simple telescope kits Tour of college observing deck
ASTRONOMY
Optical illusions Color illusions Camouflage in nature Illusions in art
ILLUSIONS
Blank chart for keeping notes of own exam Eye chart Bulb model of eye that focuses image with/without corrective lenses Stethoscope Blood pressure gauges Blood typing (with artificial blood) Skeleton and bones Hot and cold packs
DOCTOR'S VISIT
Touch: sensitivity to pin pricks Taste: sensitivity to sour, salty, bitter, and sweet Reflexes Sight: saturation of rods and cones Color blindness
THE SENSES
Steel bar approximating atmospheric pressure Magdeburg hemispheres Atmospheric pressure to collapse soda cans Barometric pressure Ice melting under pressure: cutting a block of ice with a wire and weights Blood pressure
PRESSURE
Colors in light and paint (take home) Pin-hole camera (take home) Black-and-white and color photography Polaroid photography Sight: saturation of rods and cones Color blindness
COLOR, LIGHT, AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Colors in light and paint Projection of primary colors Mixing primary colors in paint Colored objects viewed through colored filters Light refraction and scattering The blue color of the sky; the red sky color at evening
I Denotes experiments that are hands-on. % Denotes experiments that the kids can repeat at home. 2 Denotes experiments that are viewed as demonstrations.
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much more extensive hands-on experience than in our previous outreach programs. We were also interested in addressing parental involvement. Since it is often difficult for parents to answer all the questions a child might have, the idea of trying a science experiment at home might prove daunting to many nonscientist parents. We therefore felt that it was critical to include the parents in the workshops. We encouraged the kids and their parents to work as a team (see Fig. 1) in performing the different
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Table 1. Recent Workshop Topics and a Sampling of ExperimentsW,3
Chemistry Everyday for Everyone
experiments, with the hope of inspiring them to continue once they returned home. Part of the requirement for our college students is that they provide supplemental notes to each kid–parent team with instructions and suggestions for repeating experiments at home or for new experiments that they might try on their own. Involving the parents in such a workshop was a central feature of two other successful outreach programs carried out at IBM1 and at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh (19).
Chemistry Everyday for Everyone
As in the original format, the college students spend most of the month of January designing their workshops: collecting, buying, or building the materials needed, and developing and practicing their presentations. Then, in the final weekend of the Winter Study period, 4th graders, each accompanied by one parent, come to campus to participate in two workshops, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. With four or five workshops running simultaneously, the program can accommodate 60 kid–parent pairs on a given day with 12 to 15 pairs per workshop. The program is designed so that each kid–parent pair attends only two of the five workshops being presented. Owing to the length of each workshop (two hours), it is not possible for them attend all five.
Design of the “Science for Kids” Workshops Since our Winter Study term is so brief (less than four weeks), we encourage the students to organize into groups of three to four during the fall semester and begin brainstorming about science topics that they’d like to develop into workshops. They may choose topics from any area of science that interests them. Science catalogs2 and demonstration reference books (20–26 )3 provide inspiration at this stage. The first two and a half weeks in January are then spent developing the workshops, working out the experiments, and deciding on the best level at which to present the information. The faculty advisors serve as a resource for everything from content to pedagogical approaches for the presentations. As the workshops begin to take shape, each team of students also prepares supplementary notes (2–5 pages) for the kids and their parents. These notes describe how to do some of the experiments at home and give further suggestions for other simple experiments that can be done. Many of the workshops have one or two “experiments” that the kids can take home. For example, in the Natural Disasters workshop, the kids were shown how to simulate tornadoes by taping two 2-liter soda bottles together and partially filling them with colored water. This was an ideal “prop” for the kids to take home to demonstrate to others or to make at home themselves. Table 1 gives examples of the types of workshops that have been developed and the handson experiments that have been included. During the third week of January, several days before the scheduled workshops, each group does a full “dress rehearsal”. Students from the other workshop groups and the faculty advisors serve as the audience during this run-through, trying to ask probing questions during the presentations, intentionally making mistakes which the kids might make during the hands-on experiments, and providing helpful advice. In particular, the run-through allows the students to work out the logistics of making sure there are enough supplies to provide each kid–parent team with experimental materials and to consider the pedagogical difficulties of explaining a complicated scientific concept to a 4th-grade audience. The rest of that week is dedicated to correcting problems and polishing the presentation.
Specific Examples Chemistry and Cooking An example of a workshop with a chemistry theme is Chemistry and Cooking. With the help of a diagram, the students discussed the conversion of sugar to carbon dioxide
by yeast, then made a simple flour, sugar, yeast, and water dough. The dough was put aside, and the kids could observe how much it rose over time. The second experiment involved testing food for starch content with iodine. For this, the participants were divided into groups and provided with a dropper bottle of iodine solution and a paper plate with a variety of food items (rice, potato, peanut butter, sugar). With the help of the students they were able to test the different foods for starch. A third exercise, again with full participation by the kids and their parents, tested the acidity/basicity of various foods with both litmus paper and an indicator solution made from red cabbage. After a short break, the students discussed iron supplements in food and showed how a magnet can extract visible amounts of iron from commercial cereals. The students then discussed emulsions and demonstrated that mustard can act as an emulsifier in an oil–vinegar mixture. The final experiment tested foods for fat by rubbing samples on white paper and observing the resulting translucence. In the handout for this workshop, the students discussed and gave instructions for home experiments on extracting iron from cereals, making emulsions, and using cabbage juice as an indicator. The handout also listed references for two books describing chemistry experiments for kids and an adult-level book on the science of cooking. Forensic Science Forensic Science is an example of a workshop that draws on a wider range of scientific topics (27). In this workshop the participants are presented with a crime scene such as a car accident, a theft, or a kidnapping. These crime scenes are either staged or presented through photographs/video. In the theft scenario, for instance, a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon portraying a break-in at Calvin’s home was used. For the kidnapping scenario, a film clip from the movie Hook in which parents receive a ransom note was used. The kids and parents then collect evidence from the crime scene: glass fragments (which have been fire polished to remove sharp edges), fiber or fabric samples, fingerprints, blood (simulated), hair samples, and ink from a ransom note. The participants then take the various samples they have collected to the “crime lab” where they compare their evidence against samples obtained by the “investigators” (the college students) from the “prime suspects”. The participants characterize the various glass fragments by immersing them in a series of oils prepared by mixing clove oil and olive oil, to compare their refractive indices. The fibers/fabrics can be characterized by their interaction with different dyes; while the details of the interaction of the dyes with the fabrics are not discussed, the kids can appreciate that wool, cotton, and synthetic fibers should have different chemical structures and therefore react differently to the different stains. For blood analysis, synthetic blood and antisera are used to realistically simulate the bloodtyping process. The participants are shown how to lift fingerprints from a surface with powder and also how to take a set of fingerprints using an inkless fingerprinting system. Finally, paper chromatography is used to compare the inks from a variety of pens with the ink from the ransom note. This experiment is easily repeated at home using coffee filters as the chromatographic medium and water or vinegar as the developing solvent.
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Benefits to College Students, Kids, and Parents
Budget
This program has been tremendously rewarding for everyone involved. For the students, there is the experience of conceiving, researching, and implementing a major project that is more involved than most projects for their other classes. They have to learn to work well in a group of their peers as well as to work with a group of enthusiastic young kids. They get the instructor’s perspective on what is involved in running a class. A number of students who have participated in Science for Kids have chosen to teach after college and have cited this experience as important in their decision. Even for those not intending to teach as a career, the experience of learning to express themselves clearly and to make their topic understandable to 9- and 10-year-olds is invaluable. The students participating in the program are not all science majors. Many are first-year students and a number are junior and senior majors in the humanities and social sciences. The course gives them a chance to do science differently from the way they would in a traditional science course or in an undergraduate research setting. They can focus on the visual and pedagogical effect of an experiment and how it can help them clarify a scientific concept for a group of children, rather than worrying about strict protocols and obtaining precise results. The students receive credit for one winter study course. (They need 1 winter study course per year, 4 total for graduation.) For the 4th graders, of course, the workshops are a wonderful experience. At that age, they are enthusiastic and open-minded. They are thrilled to be spending the day on a college campus, getting to work in college laboratories, and meeting college students. We have heard of kids repeating the experiments for the other parent and for their siblings as soon as they returned home. We also encourage the kids to take the experiments into their classrooms for show-and-tell, and we have heard from a number of teachers and parents whose kids have actually done this. The parents’ response to the program has been overwhelmingly positive. They all learn a great deal of science and enjoy working with their kids in the workshops. One parent commented that our workshops were the only nonathletic activity he had ever shared with his child. Other parents have commented that this was the first time they had ever had the chance to do any hands-on experiments themselves. Working as a team enables the parent and child to continue thinking about the science after the workshop, since they had the chance to make the same observations and try the same experiments. The presence of the parents also allows us to include some activities that our students could not supervise adequately without parental assistance.
Because we encourage the students to develop experiments that can be easily repeated at home, the costs involved are generally low, though this depends somewhat on the topic chosen as well as the resourcefulness of the students. We have found that $25–$100 per workshop is a reasonable figure. This represents the cost of providing all hands-on materials for the participants to do all of the experiments in the workshop. In addition, approximately $200 per year is spent for postage and photocopying the various mailings and handouts. With judicious planning, the entire program can be conducted for approximately $600 to $1000. We do not charge for participation in the workshops. Our financing comes from the winter study program budget for the college.
Role of Faculty Advisors in Science for Kids One of the main tasks of the faculty members involved is to supervise the evolution of the workshops themselves, as described above. The second task is to provide logistical support: helping the students gather enough materials to accommodate all the kid–parent teams, coordinating the invitations and responses to and from the workshop participants, and coordinating the actual day of the workshops. We have found that our program runs most smoothly with two faculty members supervising approximately 16–20 college students. 1508
Other Possibilities We have presented here the basic outline of our program as it runs during our January term. There is a great deal of flexibility in this type of program, however, and it could easily be adapted to a variety of other schedules or audiences. One year, for instance, our workshops were presented for a group of Upward Bound students from a local high school. Another possibility would be for a local student ACS chapter to develop a series of similar workshops and present them at various times during the year or to organize National Chemistry Week activities around this type of program. Acknowledgment Reinhard A. Wobus of the Geosciences Department deserves credit for cofounding the earliest incarnation of our “science-on-wheels” program with LJK. Notes W Additional supporting material such as more detailed descriptions of our experiments, drafts of our letters to parents and teachers, registration forms, and a copy of our detailed calendar of organization for the program is available on JCE Online at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/ Journal/issues/1999/Nov/abs1505.html. 1. LYP participated in “Family Science”, organized by the Local Education Outreach Program at IBM, T. J. Watson Research Center, 1993, unpublished. 2. Carolina Science and Math Catalog, Carolina Biological Supply Company, Burlington, NC; Ward’s Biology Catalogue, Ward’s, Rochester, NY; Frey Scientific Catalog, Beckley Cardy Group, Mansfield, OH; Flinn Chemical & Biological Catalog Reference Manual, Flinn Scientific, Batavia, IL. 3. We encouraged our students to consult local public and elementary school libraries, standard demonstration reference books, catalogs, museums, and other professors and technical assistants. The activities presented here are derived from all of these sources. which are too numerous to list comprehensively.
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Chemistry Everyday for Everyone 5. Kelter, P.; Hughes, K.; Murphy, A.; Condon, K.; Heil, P.; Lehman, M.; Netz, D.; Wagner, T. J. Chem. Educ. 1994, 71, 864–866. 6. Waldman, A. S.; Schechinger, L.; Nowick, J. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 762–764. 7. Nowick, J. S.; Brisbois, R. G. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 668. 8. Seager, S. L.; Swenson, K. T. J. Chem. Educ. 1987, 64, 157– 159. 9. Van Doren, J. M.; Nestor, L. P.; Knighton, W. B. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 1178–1179. 10. Gammon, S. D.; Graduate Students for Chemical Education. J. Chem. Educ. 1994, 71, 1077–1079. 11. Gennaro, E.; Lawrenz, F. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 1031–1032. 12. Greco, T. G.; Greco, C. B. J. Chem. Educ. 1987, 64, 537–538. 13. Hill, A. E.; Berger, S. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 230–231. 14. Howard, R. E.; Barnes, S.; Hollingsworth, P. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 512–514. 15. Koppang, M. D.; Webb, K. M.; Srinivasan, R. R. J. Chem. Educ. 1994, 71, 929–931. 16. Russo, R. N.; Parrish, S. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, 49–50. 17. Shaw, C. F.; Greenler, R. G.; Lasca, N. P.; Brooks, A. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1992, 69, 1020–1023. 18. Yager, R. E. Sci. Child. 1983, 20, 20.
19. Kelter, P. B.; Paulson, J. R.; Benbow, A. J. Chem. Educ. 1990, 67, 892–895. 20. Borgford, C. L.; Summerlin, L. R. Chemical Activities; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1988. 21. Shakahashiri, B. Z. Chemical Demonstrations: A Handbook for Teachers of Chemistry, Vol. 1; The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, WI, 1983. 22. Shakahashiri, B. Z. Chemical Demonstrations: A Handbook for Teachers of Chemistry, Vol. 2; The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, WI, 1985. 23. Shakahashiri, B. Z. Chemical Demonstrations: A Handbook for Teachers of Chemistry, Vol. 3; The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, WI, 1989. 24. Shakahashiri, B. Z. Chemical Demonstrations: A Handbook for Teachers of Chemistry, Vol. 4; The University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, WI, 1992. 25. Summerlin, L. R.; Ealy, J. L. Chemical Demonstrations; Vol. 1, 2nd ed.; The American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1988. 26. Summerlin, L. R.; Borgford, C. L.; Daly, J. B. Chemical Demonstrations: A Source Book for Teachers; Vol. 2, 2nd ed.; The American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1988. 27. Kaplan, L. J. Crime Lab. Dig. 1992, 19 (4), 107–132.
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