Some people thought this was a stupid thing to try to do: “These kids have never had an opportunity to do experiments – you can try, but they won’t succeed,” the assistant principal of the high school told me when I first presented the idea. Others loved it: “These kids have never had an opportunity to do experiments – what a mind-opening venture for them!” said the librarian at the technical school. In the end, the second group came out right.
What sticks in my mind most from the event and all the planning that went into it are the students who got involved:
Jacinto, the first student who came to me wanting to be involved, arrived one afternoon in the technical school library, clad in ripped up “non-school” clothes, and super-excited to show off an experiment he had discovered. He brought with him a plate, a glass cup, and some matches and went out to the school pump and filled the cup with water. He put the water on the plate, ran back outside to get a leaf, and then stuck a match into a piece of folded leaf, put the leaf with the upright match in the water, and lit the match. He then put the glass cup over the top of the match, covering the flame. The flame quickly went out – and all the water that was in the plate got sucked up into the cup! Jacinto looked up with a grin, “Yeah, this is my experiment.” “And why does this happen?” I asked him. He was perplexed for a moment. Then he ran out the door, shouting over his shoulder, “Hold on, I’ll go ask Father Pierre, the physics teacher!”
Santos, also one of my best theatre-group students, excitedly brought in a car battery that he lugged all the way from his family’s house out in the bush far from school. He hooked the battery up to a radio, then cut one of the wires and dunked both ends of the wire into a cup of salt water. That radio still played! He also noticed that if he left the wires in the water with the radio playing for a while, a strange yellow substance formed in the water. “What is that?” he asked me in sincere wonder. He talked to lots of professors and read chemistry books until he figured out the chemical reaction that was occurring and what the substance must have been.
Judite, a super-shy 8th grade girl, couldn’t think of an experiment, and didn’t like any of the ideas I kept giving her. Two days before the fair, I found one she liked – “Let’s test what happens to a person’s heartbeat when they exercise.” All the students feverishly working in the library to put last minute touches on their projects stopped, took their heartbeat for one minute, then ran a lap around the school, and took their heartbeat again. Then, I showed her how to put the results in a table for her poster – “Did you like this experiment, then?” I asked her after it had gotten dark and she was still sitting at a desk in the library working on her write-up. The huge smile that burst across her face was answer enough.
The stories go on – I worked one-on-one with more than 30 students to prepare their projects. Some kids started right away in May and spent months developing just the right way to react baking soda with vinegar or float eggs in salt water; others came to me the day before the fair wanting to participate!
I did a lot of “behind the scenes” organizing to try to make the event a “big deal” in town. With the help of Maria, a Portuguese volunteer librarian at the technical school, I wrote formal letters to our district authorities and arranged to have the fair in the “Sessions Hall” – the Hall where all local government things happen and probably the nicest space in the village. After prodding from a student from the public high school, I sent some information to that school’s principal and went and gave an explanation to their teachers on how to participate. With a few students from there and a group from each of my schools, a total of 38 students presented projects on July 5th.
On the day of the fair – completely to my surprise – the Administradora (similar to the mayor of the county) and the District Director of Education showed up to give opening speeches at the event and decided to go around see each and every project. Some students became nervous to present in front of them and the school directors who also went around, but other busted with pride to explain their experiments: Luis couldn't hide a grin when the Administrador called all of the other students over to see his project: an example of how the lungs function using a plastic bottle and a balloon, and a special explanation on how the lungs function differently and are destroyed by smoking.
The Salesian Sisters donated prizes from their large stock of donated school supplies, and I got some special thick paper to print nice certificates. During the fair, we even had a “Science Trivia” contest to involve all the attendees in a bit of scientific fun.
And what were the winning projects for Science Fair Inharrime 2008?
- 1st place went to Elipsoide, an 8th grader who created a power strip made with a type of thick mud as an insulator instead of plastic.
- 2nd place to Sídonia, a 2nd year Construction student at the technical school, who tested the activation of yeast by putting yeast in glass soda bottles – one bottle with water and salt, and the other bottle with water and sugar. She put a balloon on top of both bottles and the balloon on the bottle with sugar filled up, but the one of the bottle with salt did not.
- 3rd place went to Márcia, a 9th grader who created a type of “hot pack” out of coconut shells to keep food hot long after cooking, and -
- 4th place went to 10th grader Santos and his conduction of electricity in salt water – we all especially loved this experiment because it provided animated music to keep the fair moving all day long!
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