Members of Women in Science and Engineering got together at Kahler Middle School on Feb. 17 to teach younger students different scientific experiments. It took a lot of preparation in order to have a successful day of science.
“To prepare for the Science Day, we first had to have a club meeting with all the people that were attending [to] figure out transportation and what experiments we were doing. We had to make an inventory of the materials that we had and figure out what materials we still needed to complete all the experiments,” Nicole Geer (12) said.
Planning the right experiments was very crucial because they needed to be age appropriate, yet interesting.
“Experiments have to be ones that don’t involve open flame, are cool to watch, are as interactive as possible and are things that we can explain at a middle school level,” Geer said.
They performed a variety of science experiments, giving the middle schoolers experiences of different components of science.
“The experiment I did was about water tension. We filled bags with water, and then we had kids put pencils through the bag. The water did not leak out, and we were able to show how the polymers in the plastic bag created a barrier for the water. Another experiment was done by intertwining the pages of two books. When kids tried to pull the books apart, they were not able to due to surface tension,” Rachel Eder (11) said.
Even though the experiments were chosen in favor of the middle schoolers, most of the WISE members also ended up enjoying themselves by performing the experiments.
“I come to Science Days because they are honestly my favorite part of the club. They’re a lot fun for us, but they are also a lot of fun for the kids, and that means a lot to me because I love kids,” Geer said.
Science Day is meant to allow middle schoolers to learn something new. They can benefit by seeing different elements of science and put the knowledge they learn to use later on.
“My biggest hope is that they want to learn more about [the experiments], and that more students choose to go into STEM fields, especially the female students. We hope that a lot of them will join WISE once they get to high school. A lot of our current members remember when the club came to their middle schools for Science Days and it had an impact on them,” Geer said.
