Newsjournal body.qxp - College of Chemistry - University of ...

translating their technical knowledge into presentations that are appropriate
for elementary classrooms. “That is where we come in,” said Brown.
Added Pauzanshie, “It’s a perfect match because graduate students are
quite flexible and can make time to have some fun.” Pauzanshie gets third
graders thinking about phase transitions and state change using both dry
ice and liquid nitrogen. “The children love the liquid nitrogen experiments,
since it looks like water but evaporates instantly when poured out of its
container.” And to show the few skeptics that the liquid was indeed quite
cold, he dunked a flower in the liquid and proceeded to shatter it, to the
amazement and amusement of the onlookers.
Many of the demonstrations from the graduate students are focused on
larger issues, beyond pure chemistry, such as soil science and ecosystems, to
impart a broader perspective to the students. “Everything is related” is how
Amber Wise describes her message. She plays games with the children to
teach them about the circle of life. First Wise, a chemistry graduate student,
she assigns everyone to be an object in the ecosystem. “They get to be things
like air, soil, water, people and plants. One child takes a ball of yarn, holds
the loose string, and tosses the ball to another child whose assigned element
connects with their own, such as tree connecting to soil, and then explains
the connection. In the end we make a big interlocking web, to illustrate
that everything is interdependent.”
Not your grandma’s high school
LOVE LETTERS. Children from Cragmont Elementary
in Berkeley responded to Peter Pauzanshie’s
presentation of “Liquids, Gases, Solids and Goo.” “It was
cool when you put the flower into the liquid nitrogen.
But the goo was the coolest. I am going to make it
at my house. When I grow up, maybe I want to be
a scientist. It would be cool.”
Connections are a big part of the Nano*High message as well, although
its lessons dwell more on interactions at the nanoscale. (The asterisk refers
to an interesting bit of information: “the human hair is 50,000 nanometers
across.”) Nano*High at LBNL was started as a mechanism to get high school
students more interested in science, according to organizer Mark Alper,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NEWSJOURNAL 2005
MaryAnn Malkos photo
13