For the Love of Science!

So late yesterday afternoon my friend Jai forwarded an email she got about the local school district needing judges for their Science Fair today. Since I've been sitting around doing nothing, I jumped at the opportunity! Today I got ready in attire suitable for a work day (double bonus- khaki pants I haven't put on in a year still fit!) and headed over to the Del Rio Community Center.

I chose to judge the high school exhibits since this is the age of students I would be interested in teaching or tutoring in the future. I enjoyed seeing the kids all excited and dressed up, anxiously awaiting which judge was going to meander to their booth. I went straight for somebody how looked prepared. I didn't want to start this on a bad note... so I went to the back where a I saw a tall, neatly decorated exhibit with a young man in a suit. Bingo. He knows his science!

Turns out he was good at speaking, good at dressing up a poster-board,  and probably good at sucking up to teachers... cuz he wasn't any good at physics. But can you blame him? He's only a sophomore in a school district where kids can graduate without needing to speak any English. Technically he hasn't even taken physics yet. So maybe his teacher should have steered him away from trying to calculate the mass of "light". Lets not think about how light can be thought of as both a particle and a wave, and that to calculate the mass of a photon of light is probably...well... beyond high school pre-physics. But bless his heart for trying.

After that came a very shy, nervous, adorable girl with a presentation on the effects of microwave radiation on seeds... potential, but not blue ribbon material. Then it got worse! Two high school students that used markers to decorate their display with stars and rainbows as they determined the amount of chlorine in different types of bottled water. Nevermind what these chlorine levels mean and why it would be important to know them...they didn't know either. 

Just when I gave up hope on the abilities of the high school students, I ran across a booth with the word "flammable" on it. Yup- I found boys who found a way to play with fire. Awesome. Their presentation was actually very good, thorough, and followed the scientific process. Turns out that that cotton is the most flammable of the 5 fabrics they chose, with spandex being the least. Good to know next time you're lighting up the BBQ. I liked those two kids. Maybe Del Rio has hope.

After I scored the two young pyros, I got pulled to do the middle school section since they didn't have enough judges. It was fun but a little below the level I was wanting to see. They two girls I judged had potential though. One for sure- she demonstrated the water cycle using sand and an icecube and stuff... it was cute, but not really an experiment. E for effort tho!

All and all it was a great day. I had a lot of fun and it was cool to see people excited about stuff like science! It enforced my desire to want to be involved in the education of our youth, so I hope to have more opportunities like this one day in the future.