Science-in-Motion August 8, 2008
Posted by Jennifer in : Uncategorized , trackbackMy mom, a chemistry professor at Drexel University, founded a cool program called Science-in-Motion. SIM, for short, brings top of the line science equipment to Philadelphia public schools that can’t afford it. This video shows a demonstration she gave at a recent summer camp. The goal of SIM, the show and the video is to get kids excited about science. It works: While waiting for the presentation start, most of the kids were texting or zoning out, but by the end everyone was totally fixated on the show.
I was there to help film and to my surprise, I saw a Girls High student from my 9Queens’ Academies sitting in the second row. There are many cliches about what it means to sit in the first-row, but I think there’s something to be said about the second-row too: enthusiastic but self-conscious about it, and in this case, missing out on the thrill of getting your sneakers drenched in liquid nitrogen.
Comments
That video whizzes by fast.. had to re-watch it. Your mom reminds me of one of my general science teachers who caught the kids attention with a thermite reaction (fusing sand, burning through the asbestos sheets and into the stone countertop). He also brought a Van de Graaff generator in which the kids used to charge themselves up and zap each other, a leyden jar, did a small explosion with flour in a bag, and dropped little bits of sodium metal into water which danced in flame (a different science teacher in a different class dropped the whole jar and the sodium burned down through two stories to the basement. The stuff your mom did looked interesting. There was an interesting anecdote about a chemistry prank recounted by my chem lab professor from when he’d been a student, but I’d better leave that one out..
Wait! Your into chemistry and chess.
Who is the real Jennifer! I will never figure that one out! Well the science behind this all looks exciting