Before science night we went to Harmon's house to test our experiment and make sure it worked. The next day we made a poster in class to appeal to the little kids at the elementary school and made sure everyone knew who what materials they were going bring to help conduct the experiment. The day of the science night we double checked all the materials we brought and performed the experiment again to be as prepared as possible.
We got to LME as soon as we all could to set up our table and make sure everything was ready for the kids. Throughout the night I made the boats for the children for safety reasons, Harmon &Shawn rinsed and replace the water for the trays, and Ivan & Jonathan taught the children what to do and set up the races. The children were able to pick the soap they wanted (Best Soap in Town, Best Soap Around, and Super Soap), put the soap on the boats and finally race with other children or with their parents.
The children enjoyed the competitiveness of racing the boats against each other and the parents would ask questions about the science behind the experiment while cheering for their children.
We answered their questions by telling them the concept of surface tension and how soap affects it. Finally when the race was over we hyped up the children by cheering for them, creating happiness for both the children and the parents resulting in more kids to want to come to our table.
From this night I got to experience how it is to work with other people in an public environment with kids. We all got to learn how to work under pressure and with problems occurring such as water leaks and boat outages. The work environment could sometimes get stressful even for a elementary school experiment! The suggestions I have are to be the most prepared as possible for these type of events. Have your materials ready, set up early, and make sure the experiment works and everyone knows what they're doing. Unexpected things are inevitable and you must work through them. Overall this was a great experience getting to work with my lab partners and teaching children and parents something new about science.
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