Mad Scientists

Location: Henderson Elementary School

Date: Saturday, November 16, 2013; 9:50 am-12:00 pm

The school year had begun almost 3 months ago and to my utter disappointment, I had not been to any of the Saturday morning projects.  So I was excited to be returning back to Henderson after a long break, and for one of my favorite programs – ‘Mad Scientists’.  As I arrived at the Garfield CTA station, I saw our Volunteer Leader Brenna waiting for the bus.  I asked her about the new 4^th grade batch of kids that would be participating and she said that this was a feisty bunch and would be causing a lot of ruckus.  Well, it promised to be a fun-filled morning.

We were going in

We arrived at the school and she showed me the two experiments that we would be performing today – ‘Bird Seed Mining’ and ‘Oil Spill Clean-Up’.  We soon welcomed another volunteer Lamont, who had come straight from an earlier Chicago Cares project, and was still wearing that nametag.  He said that he was a teacher and so had some ideas on how to deal with kids this age.  Brenna and I were thinking of topics for an icebreaker and came up with questions such as, “Favorite thing to do in the rain” etc.  Lamont said that since we were doing one experiment that was “mining for treasure” and the other that was for “protecting the treasure in the environment”, we should ask the kids what they treasure in life.  This was a brilliant suggestion and I told Brenna and we knew who would be leading the session today!

Soon thereafter Pat, who co-leads this project with Brenna, arrived as did Marc Levy, who gives Wilson a run for his money in terms of attending Chicago Cares projects.  Three other volunteers as well as a dozen kids joined us and we all assembled around a table.  Brenna asked the icebreaker question and many said jewelry, games, toys, money etc – all things typical of kids that age.  The volunteers had more profound answers ranging from Lamont saying “people” and Marc saying “my college education”.  When my turn came I said it was my friends, though I realized that the kids probably wanted to hear more materialistic things. 

Our treasure wasn't quite this precious

Next we split into 4 groups and I was paired with 3 girls and another volunteer.  The first experiment was ‘Bird Seed Mining’ and this involved beads of gold, silver, blue and white color as well as 3 types of seeds – pumpkin, sunflower and kernels.  Each of the gold, silver and blue beads, as well as the pumpkin seeds had a certain dollar value associated with them.  The other seeds were worthless, while the white beads had a negative value – termed as “reclamation cost”.  Well, that was sure to keep the ‘EPA’ happy!  The idea was to randomly mix everything in a pan and then the kids would “mine” for the precious beads and seeds and make separate piles.  They would then count the number in each stack, multiply by individual value of each bead or seed and come up with the total value, minus the reclamation cost. 

Wonder how much this boot would be worth!

The girls attacked our pan with gusto and each of them took a color to count.  Once they had done that, they did multiplication the good old-fashioned way with pen and paper and calculated the value that we had “mined”.  The girls had been very fast and so Brenna asked me to delay as much as possible and keep them occupied till the break.  So I asked the girls to figure out how much each of them had made out of the total value – assuming equal partnership.  The idea was to get them to divide by 3 and while it took a little more time then multiplication, they soon got this as well.  As we waited for the other groups to finish, each girl started playing with the beads and seeds.  Two of them wrote their names, while the third one was more artistic as she made a boot out of the gold and silver beads.  Seriously, even at this age it was evident that this little girl was going to have a similar fascination for shoes as millions of other women.  Soon, Brenna announced the results and while our group fell a little short of the highest value – due to the draconian reclamation costs – the girls had enjoyed themselves thoroughly and did not seem to mind.

After a short break we moved on to the second experiment – ‘Oil Spill Clean-Up’.  Brenna handed out flyers, which talked about the environmental dangers of an oil spill and used the Gulf of Mexico disaster as an example.  We were given a bowl of water with some oil in it, along with different “cleaning materials” such as cotton balls, gauze, cheesecloth and a sock.  The sock had a polymer-based coating and since hydrocarbons attract other hydrocarbons, it was the most effective way to clean the “spill”.  Now this is where I should use my polymer background and educate everyone, but it seems like a lifetime ago that I studied all of that stuff.  The girls were extremely excited to do this experiment and I asked them why the sock worked the best.  They said because it was the heaviest material.  I said no and tried to figure out a way to explain this in a non-technical manner.  I asked who were their best friends, someone they liked the most; at which they pointed at each other.  Then I asked whom they disliked, and to my least surprise they pointed at the boys.  I said that this was the reason the three of them were sitting together and the boys were far away.  They agreed, and I said that attraction between materials works in a similar way and thus the material in the sock attracted the material in the oil. 

Soon we were done and even with the socks, it took us some time to clean up all of the mess that we had made.  But it had been worth it and it seemed that at least my group had learned something. Brenna asked the kids how they had liked the session and Lamont made sure that everyone gave a feedback.  He really is a good teacher.  Before leaving, the girls in my group did a cheerleading routine, something that they enjoy practicing and performing.  I had a terrific time today and realized how much I had missed coming for this project.  Hopefully my next visit will be soon and I get to work with these fantastic kids again.  The only issue was that for the rest of the day I had the ‘Bee Gees’ song ‘New York Mining Disaster’ stuck in my head.