Community Impact

June 21, 2013 | Cathy Torrisi

UConn Students Bring the Magic of Science to Middle Schools

A group of graduate and undergraduate students spent three weeks giving hands-on polymer chemistry demonstrations at 12 Connecticut schools.

UCoUConn science Wizard and future physics teacher Peter Dufner '12 (CLAS), '13 MA, right, helps an Illing Middle School 8th grader test his poly putty. (Cathy Torrisi/UConn Photo)

UConn Science Wizard and future physics teacher Peter Dufner '12 (CLAS), '13 MA, right, helps an Illing Middle School 8th grader test his poly putty. (Cathy Torrisi/UConn Photo)

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UConn Science Wizard and future physics teacher Peter Dufner ’12 (CLAS), ’13 MA, right, helps an Illing Middle School 8th grader test his poly putty. (Cathy Torrisi/UConn Photo)

For three weeks during May and June, a group of UConn graduate and undergraduate science and education majors have been engaged in something magical. They have been getting middle school students absorbed in chemistry.

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UConn Science Wizard and chemistry major Marisia Fikiet ’13 (CLAS), left, helps Illing Middle School 8th graders. (Cathy Torrisi/UConn Photo)

Known as the UConn Science Wizards, the college students gave hands-on polymer chemistry demonstrations at inner-city and rural middle schools around Connecticut. They took a playful approach to teaching science, using a polymer the middle schoolers could relate to: Silly Putty.

“I love the program!” said Michelle Goodwin, science teacher at East Hartford Middle School. “It really gets the students excited about science.”

Funded by a grant from the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the Science Wizards were recruited largely from the UConn Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), an organization that supports minority students in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math).

According to Joy Erickson, faculty advisor for the group, the Wizards visited 1,500 students in 12 schools in East Hartford, Ellington, Enfield, Hartford, Manchester, Mansfield, and Windham in an effort to expose them to the fun and relevance of science.

As part of the classroom demonstrations, the UConn students showed the younger students how substances can be combined to form common polymers such as nylon and polyurethane foam insulation. Polymers are compounds made up of repeated linked units.

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UConn Science Wizard Alexandrea Pires ’14 (ED), right, assists Illing Middle School 8th graders. (Cathy Torrisi/UConn Photo)

The middle-schoolers then divided into small groups to work on a Poly Challenge. They had to come up with their own recipe for “poly putty.”

They first followed standard recipes provided by the Wizards, testing each putty they created by bouncing it, stretching it, breaking it, and flattening it to see how closely it resembled Silly Putty. (Fun fact: Silly Putty was invented by accident during World War II in an attempt to create an alternative to rubber, which was in short supply.) The students then used what they learned to come up with their own recipes.

Steven Woltronist, second year doctoral student in chemistry, leads a dry-ice demonstration for middle school students touring the polymer labs as part of the UConn Chemistry Wizards program.
Steven Woltronist, a doctoral student in chemistry, leads a dry ice demonstration for middle school students touring the polymer labs as part of the UConn Chemistry Wizards program. (Cathy Torrisi/UConn Photo)

The winning team from each school won a trip to UConn in early June, to tour the polymer labs. There they saw current research projects, such as the development of a polymer fabric that conducts electricity. A T-shirt made of the fabric will be able to heat or cool its wearer.

“That was cool,” said Nada Mohamed, a sixth-grader from Two Rivers Magnet Middle School in East Hartford, after the tour. Mohamed wants to be an environmental scientist.

“We enjoy watching these young students have fun with chemistry,” Erickson said. “We hope that some of them will become UConn Science Wizards themselves one day.”