EAST LONGMEADOW – The Mountain View Elementary School cafeteria was chock-full of tornadoes, robots, potatoes, strawberry DNA and slime on the night of April 26, as students and their families brought their A-game with interactive learning activities at the schools “Science Night.”

Mountain View PTO member and organizer of the event, Kim Martin, explained that parents were encouraged to work on a science-related project with their students that could be put up on display at a station in the cafeteria. From there, students were able to travel around to each station and learn from their peers, and peers parents, about one another’s projects.  

Student Ryan Martin built “tornadoes in a bottle,” which consisted of two, one-liter soda bottles connected at the openings.  Inside, Martin explained that by flipping and shaking the bottles, the water inside would swirl around like a tornado down to the connecting bottle.

The Chung family displayed their “electric train” that uses a homopolar engine. Student Ryan Chung explained that by placing a magnet on either side of a battery, the battery would be pulled through a coiled copper wire.

“When both sets of magnets touch the wire, electricity flows from one end of the battery to the other creating a magnetic field. The magnets in front then pull the battery forward, while the magnets in back push it forward,” his project read.

Mother and Chair of the East Longmeadow Board of Health Sarah McAdoo displayed her student’s “popsicle stick catapult” project, which teaches students how to create a simple machine.  The McAdoo family brought supplies for students to build their own catapult, as well as various goodies to catapult in the room including marshmallows, erasers and small pom-poms.

“This is something I definitely wouldn’t have done myself right away, but it was very cool to get it together. It’s nice to see simple projects that they [students] can do and they’re off the computer, but it’s something that really is fun,” McAdoo said. “What’s really unique about this is the fact that it’s parents and kids doing it together. The project isn’t just the child making it and showing it, we can talk about it and potentially do it together.”

Student Olivia Kozlowski and mom Stephanie Kozlowski shared their buoyancy project with others, explaining what causes various items to sink or float.  Olivia demonstrated as she dropped a clementine into a large, clear bowl of water.  When the clementine’s skin is on, it floats. In contrast, when the skin has been peeled off, the clementine sinks, as the skin kept air inside of the fruit.

“I thought that an eraser would float because it’s light, but it sinks!” Olivia exclaimed as she dropped the pencil eraser into the bowl of water.

Samantha Lloyd, along with her mother, demonstrated that after filling a plastic sandwich bag with water and securely closing it, students could shove pencils through one side of the full bag and out of the other side without water leaking.

The Petit family looked on as daughter Clara extracted DNA from strawberries through the creation of an extraction solution, consisting of water, salt and dish soap.  From there, the mashed strawberries were mixed with the extraction solution and then strained.  Following the straining, Clara added rubbing alcohol to the strained strawberries, and the DNA rose to the top.

As opposed to creating a tri-fold display board, the Lonczak family built a stand-up display that had simple machines including pulleys and levers which shared how tasks can be completed by using wheels and ropes with less work than lifting in another manner.

In addition to the projects featured in the cafeteria, there were two stations in the hallway dedicated to the elementary school’s robots. Students begin to learn how to code on their computers in the third grade, and from that, are able to create a form of Lego-robot.  Moving up, students can join the schools Vex Robotics team which features significantly larger robots that the students have built. The Vex robots can be manipulated by control consoles, which are similar to that of a video game. The robots are able to pick up objects from the ground and stack them on various surfaces.

Throughout the course of the event, families expressed that completing the projects for Science Night gave the students and parents something to work on together, and gave them all the opportunity to learn.

For additional photos of the evening, check out the photo-gallery at thereminder.com.