Young Einsteins found in Oakland

School groups tour the Oakland Schools Science Fair
projects at Chabot. Ben Burress, Chabot Space & Science CenterIt's the time of year again that I get a chance to peruse what our scientific-minded youth are thinking on questions of the physical world and universe around us: Oakland Unified School District Science Fair!

The science projects of students from a range of schools in Oakland are on display at Chabot Space & Science Center for a couple of days-a long-time tradition I know, because when I was in elementary school (Glenview Elementary in Oakland) I participated in the Science Fair every year and wound up with my First Grade project (Which Straw Works Best-longer or shorter?) on display at Chabot Observatory on Mountain Blvd.

So I went out into our halls to browse the rows of free-standing cardboard displays (all pre-fabbed display boards; in my day we'd make our own from boxes, staples, and glue!) to see what today's young minds are thinking about science. In particular, I was looking for any that dealt with astronomy.

As usual, I saw a range of science topics, presentations styles, decoration, and grade levels. I saw the cadre of "standard" science projects that get done every year (the tabletop volcano, the floating egg, the electric potato, and the like).

I also saw some that I'd not seen before. There was one where the question asked was who has more germs, boys or girls? The experimenter took swab samples from behind the ears and from the hands of the students in her fourth grade class and grew germ cultures, which were all displayed before the presentation board in little plastic Petri dishes. What was the result? Do you want to know? Well, by this experiment at least, the girls won over the boys in having more germs from both sample sites....

But what of the astronomy? In all of the couple hundred project displays, only three of them were astronomy projects. This doesn't surprise me too much, since astronomy is for the most part an observational, not experimental, science and doesn't lend itself to the kinds of things kids like to get their hands into. And of my own elementary school science fair projects, not one of them dealt with astronomy, so I really can't complain!

What were they? One dealt with observations of Moon phases, asking the question is there a pattern to the way in which the Moon's shape changes from day to day. One asked why do the planets of the Solar System take different periods of time to orbit the Sun, and why do they have different temperatures. Finally, one asked the ultimate Inconvenient Truth sort of question: What would happen to Earth if the Sun suddenly turned off? (That would be inconvenient!) The answer to that one was, not long, since just about everything we do requires energy derived ultimately from the Sun.

The results of my own observation project, walking down the halls of Chabot and seeing what's up in the minds of our youth, was a happy success: the curiosity and scientific enthusiasm of our budding scientists appears to be alive and well.

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