SCIENCE & NATURE CONFERENCE

Fire Up About Science!
Fifth Annual SCSC Science & Nature Conference, October 27

By Bridget Serig

Each year the number of students increases dramatically at the Science & Nature Conference hosted on the Gustavus Adolphus College campus simply because of the increased level of student satisfaction and by word of mouth! The academically engaging hands-on sessions are exciting to students in third through ninth grades and leave them awed and inspired. Science concepts are presented in new ways, students come together from many schools, professionals from the field show real-life examples, and college professors demonstrate advanced concepts and experiments, leading to a huge impact on students’ lives. We see this in the excitement in their eyes, the exhilaration in their steps and the gratitude in their voices as they leave with their creations from the day and their minds overflowing with fascinating ideas.

This year’s conference begins with Mad Science’s “Fire and Ice” assembly guaranteed to spark young minds early in the day with amazing scientific demonstrations. Eggs will be sucked into flasks; Bernoulli’s principles will be demonstrated with leaf blowers, levitation and forces of friction; and volunteers will be showered with clouds, bubbles and fog!

From there, students attend three self-selected breakout sessions. Cool trajectory experiments, refracting light, examining a real human brain, learning how muscles work together, exploring archeology samples, maneuvering through nature using wilderness skills, engineering bridges, talking to veterinarians, capturing germs in black lights, making pickles glow, extracting DNA, charting stars and exploring the bizarre world of fungi are just some of the tremendous opportunities students will be afforded!

All students, grades three through nine, are invited to attend this conference with an adult chaperone. Join us for a day when the world of science explodes in a variety of ways. Register by clicking the “Events” button on our SCSC Web page. Read more about the conference by clicking Science & Nature Conference under Student Academic Outreach.