Largest-ever South Side Science Festival places UChicago STEM in youngsters’ arms

Yewande Oluwole, 5, and her sister Jadesola, 3, love astronomy and might title each planet—even the dwarf planets. But peering via a refracting telescope at a tree department on the University of Chicago Crerar Quad was the primary time the celebrities felt inside attain.

“It’s important that they get a chance to experience science and see it in real time,” stated their father, Akinyele Oluwole. “This just gives them the opportunity to see more, do more, touch more and get more involved.”

The Oluwoles have been amongst of the hundreds of households from throughout Chicago who got here to the UChicago campus on Saturday for the annual South Side Science Festival. This was the most important occasion within the competition’s four-year historical past, with greater than 700 UChicago scientists and 200 volunteers from throughout campus sharing STEM with roughly 4,300 youngsters and oldsters from throughout Chicago, greater than half of whom have been from South Side communities.

The occasion was sponsored by the UChicago Office of Civic Engagement, Biological Sciences Division, Physical Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME).

The competition’s 110 hands-on actions let youngsters play with lasers, make robots dance, synthesize gloopy slime worms, examine animal skulls, apply CPR and see their world underneath highly effective microscopes. The goal is not to spark curiosity in science, stated UChicago Chemistry Prof. John Anderson, one of many occasion’s authentic founding school members. That spark is already lit in a baby’s pure love of discovery. The South Side Science Festival’s objective is to maintain that flame burning.

“I think when you’re a kid, there’s a lot of joy and interest in science. And then as folks get older, they say, ‘Oh, it’s hard. That’s not me. That’s not for me,’” Anderson stated. “One of the key messages we want to reiterate to people of all ages at the festival is that science can be for you. Science is fun, it’s interesting, it’s cool and we want to show that off.”

Peering inside reproduction human, chimp and different skulls to discover the similarities and variations was 11-year-old Gabriel Gillum’s favourite a part of the occasion. 

“The skulls over there were really cool,” he stated. “Just to see the way it seemed inside.”

The competition has turn into a household custom, Gabriel’s dad and mom Jasmine and Anthony stated. 

“It was a great time last year,” Jasmine Gillum stated. “He got to do a lot of things that he wouldn’t normally do at this age and we had a good time. So, same thing this year.”

Wren Veilleux, 9, stated her favourite demonstration was portray with MXenes (pronounced “maxines”), an electrically conductive paint found in 2011. After youngsters painted squiggles, smileys, online game characters and their names, a scientist ran a present via the drawing itself to make each a bulb and the kids’s eyes mild up.

“I expected it to light up, but dimly,” Veilleux stated. “Not nearly as bright as it did.”

Fostering a love of science throughout the group is a university-wide precedence, stated UChicago PME Dean Nadya Mason, who additionally serves as Robert J. Zimmer Professor of Molecular Engineering and UChicago interim vice chairman for Science, Innovation, and Partnerships. 

“Being able to connect people, particularly young people, to their world is not only one of the deepest obligations we have as scientists, but it’s also one of the greatest joys,” Mason stated. “Events like this help people notice the science all around them, from the farthest reaches of space to inside their own bodies.”

‘I’m going to inform my buddies all about all the pieces!’

While many of the demonstrations have been on the Crerar Quad, the third-floor atrium of the Gordon Center for Integrative Science was a gaggle of robots, microscopes, steaming liquid nitrogen tanks, gasps and laughter. 

“Warning, everyone! Loud sound!” UChicago PME Ph.D. pupil Sam Marsden shouted throughout the room earlier than shattering a racquetball that had been frozen in liquid nitrogen.

Marsden loves smashing racquetballs as a result of he can display how nicely they bounce earlier than being frozen. Many of the youngsters, he stated, most well-liked making their very own shapes to freeze and demolish.

“A lot of it has been kids sculpting hearts out of Silly Putty. And then sometimes those hearts don’t shatter. So, you know, that’s a good sign,” he stated, laughing.

Alyssa Sholes, 10, stated her favourite demonstration was the microscope the place she may watch fish embryos and different animals develop.

“I saw little bugs in water!” she stated. “I forgot what they’re called.”

They’re known as Drosophilia melanogaster, or the frequent fruit fly. For the demonstration, biophysics Ph.D. pupil Chris Anto and cell, developmental and molecular biology post-baccalaureate scholar Avi Strok needed to break down their years of analysis into the flies’ improvement into classes a child may study in a minute and take house for a lifetime.

“I love taking the basic developmental angle when I’m relating to kids, talking about how, as animals are starting to develop, they need to have hands, need to have eyes, need to have hearts,” Strok stated. 

It’s not solely group members who profit “when scientists step out of their labs and into conversations with festival goers,” stated UChicago PME Assistant Dean of Education and Outreach Laura Rico-Beck, one of many occasion’s principal organizers. The scientists get simply as a lot in return.

“There is something invaluable about engaging with curious minds from all walks of life—teachers and teenagers passionate about climate change, parents wondering how research impacts their lives,” Rico-Beck stated. “These conversations remind our scientists why their work matters beyond the research and innovation space, sharpen their ability to communicate complex ideas in accessible and meaningful ways, and build a strong sense of connection between the university and the community.”

Anto stated his personal path to science began at youngsters’s occasions just like the South Side Science Festival, the place he received to speak to working scientists and see the fervour and curiosity that drove them.

“That sense of curiosity, when it’s conveyed correctly, makes us feel connected to science in a way that pushed me towards science when I was younger and led me to give back to the scientific community here today,” he stated.

Sholes, for one, deliberate to assist share that sense of surprise the second she received house.

“I’m gonna tell my friends all about everything!” she stated. 

The South Side Science Festival is an annual fall occasion that’s free and open to the general public and held on the UChicago campus. 

This article was originally published on the UChicago Civic Engagement website.