Science Exploration Days

A Community Science Event

& An Alternative to the Science Fair

 

The Event: The prototype Science Exploration Day was Wednesday, May 5, 2004, in the gym at Adams-Friendship Middle School.

 

The Key Theme: Science is about figuring stuff out through experience, experiment and ingenuity

 

The Impact: 490 middle school students experienced science as exploring the unknown at 16 Exploration Stations staffed by 6th grade students in the Science Club. Each student had about 45 minutes to hone their science savvy skills at the Exploration Stations of their choosing.

 

The Exploration Stations ranged from extracting DNA glop from wheat germ to running gel electrophoresis to comparing the quality of french fries from different varieties of potatoes (an Exploration Station staffed by Chuck Kostichka (v-card) of UW-Madison's Hancock Ag Research Station).

 

  1. Extracting DNA Glop from Wheat Germ
  2. The Puzzle of the DNA Tube
  3. "Alien Blood" Electrophoresis Puzzle
  4. Measure and Move a Millionth of a Liter with a Micropipette
  5. Which Makes Better Bubbles: Skim Milk or Whole?
  6. Invent the Squirt Gun
  7. Take the GloGerm Challenge
  8. Catalase and the Foam Factor in Select Foods
  9. Making Ice Cream in a Can
  10. Milling the Power of Flour from Wheat and Corn
  11. From Chyme to Slime: Using Chymosin in Making Cheese
  12. The Popcorn Challenge: White, Yellow and Purple
  13. The Manduca Tobacco Hornworm Life Cycle
  14. Which Potato Makes a Better Fry?
  15. Comparing Colorful Carrots for Taste and Nutrition

 

Youth as Explorers, not just Explainers: The key talent for the youth staffing the Exploration Station is using puzzle-posing to invite the participation and exploration of the learners. The job of the puzzle-giver is not to explain what's going on, but rather to coach and coax the the learner into exploring what is going on. The key thing for the learner is not so much to learn any particular information but rather to develop their science savvy by using their skills of experimentation and invention.

 

Organizers: The event was co-organized by Michelle Pollex, a science teacher and a UW-Madison alum (who also had worked summers during college at Hancock), together with Michelle's colleague Amy Beaver.

 

Other organizers included UW-Extension Nutrition Education Program educators in Adams County, including Theresa Wimann and Mary Premo, who connected the school to the BioTrek Program.

 

Themes: Many of the Exploration Stations focused on food so we could cover two major topics:

  1. The powers and limits of science as a way of probing the unknown, and
  2. Using science in making personal choices, including choices about food and nutrition.

Food is familiar, accessible, inexpensive, and safe, and therefore food makes an excellent topic for hands-on science explorations.

 

Coverage: The event was previewed in a story on April 28 in the Adams County Times & Friendship Reporter (page 11A) that included a photo of 21 members of the 6th grade Science Club. A reporter covered the event on May 5 and the ACTFR published a full-page spread with about 16 photographs on May 12.

Here are pictures.

Adams-Friendship middle school building

click for larger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Location of Adams County.

wisconsin map showing adams county

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mitosis slide

(Click for larger image)

 

 

michelle photo

Michelle Pollex

 

 

newspaper

(click icon to download 11 x 17 .pdf of newspaper clipping)

Summary: A collaborative science outreach event initiated by a UW-Madison alum and organized by BioTrek brought together resources of the community, of UW-Madison, and of UW-Extension to give young people an opportunity to explore science and to take the lead in sharing science with their peers. The students intend to build on their experience from this year in making next year's Science Exploration Day even better. This is a model of an effective, community-initiated event that can give UW-Madison durable, perennial connections with communities around the state, at low cost and high educational impact while creating significant goodwill.

 

For organizations such as the Wisconsin Alumni Association, it also is a way to help meet the goal of involving half of all living alumni in the life of the university.

 

BioTrek is eager to work with other groups to develop ways to provide Science Exploration Days in schools and communities around Wisconsin.

 

BioTrek offers Science Exploration Days as another option to:

  • Science Fairs, where the student explains his work to other people.
  • Science Shows, where the Expert does the Explosion and the Explaining and the crowd is large but mostly just listens.
  • Science Theater as done by several science museums, where actors take on the role of Explainer or they assume the persona of some scientist, real or invented.

The nature of the Science Exploration Day means such a Day could be an annual event run primarily by a local community's initiative, leadership and talent and with secondary assistance from the campus (for example, loaning expensive equipment for the day).

 

Bio Trek Expense Breakout for this event.

  1. Three days of labor (1 for the meeting, one for the training session on May 4, one for the event on May 5). Probably another 2 days in phone calls, emails and prep.
  2. Transportation and lunch, 3 x 25 and 3 x 9 = About $100
  3. Other supplies (handouts, pencils, name badges, plastic tips and tubes) About $100

Other inputs:

  1. Labor of the two teachers and of the UW-Extension people in organizing and promoting the event and lining up donations and presenters from the community.
  2. Labor of the 6th graders in the Science Club
  3. Supplies: $100-200
  4. Space: Middle school gym, including tables and trash cans
  5. Newspaper coverage before and after
  6. Labor of adult volunteers

Contact Tom Zinnen at BioTrek (open e-mails) or call 608 265 2420.