This past week, my main focus has been to put on interactive science demos in the “space” during non-instructional hours (i.e. lunch and from 3-4pm). The demos were supposed to encourage students to unplug from their electronic devices and engage with their peers in scientific thinking. This was a difficult task – for some students, these two hours are their only breaks during the day and I can appreciate that they need their down time. Even though many were uninterested, I always managed to draw a small crowd of students that were engaged and interested, if only for a few minutes.

Monday was some simple fire fun – mimicking hybrid rocket fuel engines and extinguishing flames with carbon dioxide. The students thought they were cool, and had lots to speculate about when the rock fuel wouldn’t work! Tuesday was more exciting as I set up a whoosh bottle. I drew larger crowds to the darker parkade where students were amazed by the flame and sounds. They had lots of questions and wanted to see it happen over and over again. Thursday I had fun with densities and led students through in inquiry based “undemo”. Below is an image of what I had on the counter – a cylinder with a rainbow and four coloured liquids. I challenged students to make the rainbow and warned them that is isn’t as easy as it looks! I also asked students to speculate what was different about the liquids as I told them they were all water (the difference was the amount of sugar dissolved in each!). I had a few students sit with me for an hour trying to make the rainbow and figure out how to make it and loved the challenge. Friday was less exciting as there were fewer students at the center and many wanted to have a lazier day (which I totally understood). One student though decided they wanted to do their own experiment which involved inflating a balloon with water vapour. It ended up making a huge mess and involved a lot of clean up, but I encouraged the independent thinking and curiousity. We had a lot of fun and that’s all I was going for! This was a fun break from the lesson planning, activities, quizzes and tests. It also inspired me to incorporate more of these into my classes!