Walking into the Natural Sciences building last Saturday I was greeted with an educational cacophony. I had stumbled into the 13th annual Science Potpourri.
There were people of every age buzzing around the tables set up down the hall. In an adjacent hallway, a man was escorting a reindeer. The reindeer's budding antlers jarred from its head, and a mob of kids was timidly petting them. "You wouldn't want to do that, those new antlers are very ticklish," said 16year reindeer veteran Rob Aikman.
In a classroom, chemistry and biochemistry professor John Keller sat with his laptop at a desk. A projector lit up a chemical molecule structure from the laptop as Keller rigged up a chemical structure on Hyperchem, the chemistry department's toolofthetrade simulation program. Two young boys sat at the table, forming plastic ballandstick models into molecules of their own liking. Keller took one of the boys' models and began transcribing it to Hyperchem.
Keller's laptop displayed the new molecule, then the boys named it: Pentoxy.
It was time to take a crack at my own molecule. I tore apart remnants of past molecules and molded a carbon ring with varied attachments. When I finished, Keller stepped from his laptop and insisted I build my own molecule in Hyperchem. While I was attempting to make a double bond, I accidentally clicked on the wrong atom. I began frantically searching for the Undo button, to no avail. Keller laughed, then said "There is no Undo button in chemistry." The molecules of last week's exhibit can be found on the chemistry department homepage, www.uaf.edu/chem/
The next place I found myself was at the memory wire. Tom Clausen, chemistry professor, directed me to a glass bowl filled with water on a hot plate. Clausen took a piece of wire, folded it into a tight spiral, and then dropped it in the hot water. Upon impacting the water, the wire snapped back into its default form, a straight wire. Clausen informed me that the nickeltin memory wire is used in medical science, especially for clearing clogged arteries.
I moved on to the table where a few of the Potpourri volunteers helped kids make strangecolored blobs of goo. The chemical concoctions were 4 percent polyvinyl alcohol, food coloring, and sodium tetraborate, commonly known as Borax. "It's a special plastic that dissolves in water," said Trish Knavel, one of the volunteers. After adding yellow food color and Borax to the tiny cup, I stirred until it became gelatinous. My blob was placed in a tiny plastic togo bag.
Right next to the goo station was a metal bowl full of ice cream. However, it was not your everyday variety of ice cream; this ice cream was made with the aid of liquid nitrogen. Brian Rasley, assistant biochemistry and chemistry professor, was the ice cream technician, with the assistance of grad student Jerry Farnham. "To promote science, it helps to have stuff people like. If it's not sensually appealing, people won't get excited," said Rasley preparing another bittercold batch of ice cream.
Dozens of other stations included a glowing rock room, a room devoted to brains, fossil art, buoyancy tanks, a vortex generator made from a trashcan, and a miniature earthquake generator. The earthquake station had a sensor with jagged pebbles, and a rock would be dragged across it to generate simulated tectonic movements.
All in all, the Science Potpourri was an event worth visiting. Seeing young pupils, adolescents, and older folks learning and teaching together was an amazing spectacle.
