Showing them what they know

Paint Branch science expo sparks interest of middle schoolers

Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Brian Lewis⁄The Gazette White Oak Middle School seventh-graders (from left) Rachel Cooper, Nyasia Stewart and Miata Alexander listen as Paint Branch High School science student Claudia Ngo explains her project during a Friday science fair at the Burtonsville school.

‘‘One car was going very fast, one really slow,” he said, pointing to a pair of model cars on the miniature scale neighborhood. ‘‘Right after the crash, both cars moved 10 meters at a 10-degree angle.”

He paused, looked around, and asked, ‘‘Who here knows what ‘velocity’ means?”

Several of his audience members — all middle school students — raised their hands. Hyun nodded and continued his explanation. Nearby, Hyun’s biology classmates gave similar demonstrations, ranging from a ride simulating a crash-test dummy to a pair of distorting goggles simulating intoxication.

At Paint Branch’s science exposition on Friday, students like Hyun were no longer just science fair hosts presenting displays. Like the rest of his science class, he was also a car crash expert, a crime scene investigator — and a teacher.

According to Brian Eichenlaub, signature coordinator for Paint Branch High School, the science fair tradition began in 2003, when middle school students were invited to see what their older colleagues are learning and give older students a chance to instruct.

‘‘I think the middle school students get a sense of what awaits them at the high school level,” he said. ‘‘And our high school students get to show off a little of what they’ve learned and be miniature teachers for the day ... you see them puff up and take pride in explaining what they’ve studied.”

This year, the exposition also featured a collaborative effort between a biology class and physics class. When teacher Amanda Wells presented her 10th-grade science class with the topic of car collisions, the biologists and physicists split to research different topics.

‘‘They looked at ways to show a high blood alcohol content, as well as EMT and rescue services,” Wells said. Physicists received information concerning collision velocity, direction and mass, and were required to determine which driver was at fault.

Wells said the benefit also extends to the older students. ‘‘When we get to high school students, we found that having them take on a teaching role really helps them learn better,” she said.

The science exposition featured contributions from all the school’s science classes. More traditional poster board presentations featured studies into mineral, soil and microorganisms — one discussed the effect of sports energy drinks on water fleas. Beyond them, a series of hands-on demonstrations attracted the interest of younger students.

These included a trio of Paint Branch medics wearing lab coats marked ‘‘EMT,” who performed basic medical checkups. This proved especially popular with younger visitors such as Alex Jain, a seventh-grader at White Oak Middle School.

‘‘They took my blood pressure and dropped candy past my hand” as a reactions test, he said. He also enjoyed the crash-test dummy simulation in which team members pushed a visitor in a swivel chair and then stopped abruptly, demonstrating that seatbelts would have made the visitor safer.

‘‘I’m interested in science,” Jain said. ‘‘The science fair is good because they learn about science and how it’s fun at the same time.”

Not all the displays had to be hands-on, however. Jain said his favorite item was watching a soda can expand when heated, then crunch up when suddenly put into cold water.

At middle schools, students already have some experience with science fairs. The crossover with high school expositions gives them broader horizons to think about, said Cherrie Van Hook, who teaches science at Benjamin Banneker Middle School.

‘‘In sixth grade, they’re learning about the scientific process ... this gave them a good opportunity to see projects,” she said. ‘‘A lot of them even recognized the steps of the scientific method in the students’ projects.”

For older students, such as those in seventh grade, the show added to their syllabus of genetics and biology. Also, Van Hook said it served to show interested students what Paint Branch could offer them.

‘‘It helps the kids to see beyond our level of education, and gives them something at the high-school level to strive for,” she said. ‘‘I heard them say afterwards, ‘Wow – this is a much bigger place than our school.’ ... it represents the high school very well.”