Edutopia - September 2007 - (Page 51) An arcane science turns into a traveling circus that’s fizzy, frantic, and fun. The whirring and clicking of homemade machines fills this middle school classroom turned science museum, stacked high with magnet sculptures, spinning plates, and funhouse mirrors. A shop vacuum balances a beach ball on its upward air current; a humidifier, hooked up to an aquarium tank, gurgles out thick, white vapor that students can touch and pour into cups. Two-liter soda Illustration by David Julian Written by Sara Bernard bottles, plastic funnels, cast-iron pans, and discarded television sets Photography by Stephen Collector demonstrate everything from momentum to magnetism in a way that clearly captivates a preteen audience: above the din rises an incessant chorus of “Ooh!”s and “Ahh!”s and the occasional delighted shriek. It may seem chaotic, but it is purely scientific. Most of all, it is experiential learning—the Little Shop of Physics way. Little Shop, as it’s affectionately known to locals of Fort Collins, Colorado, is a traveling hands-on physics program based at Colorado State University since 1991. Run by CSU physics instructor Brian Jones, teacher-in-residence Sheila Ferguson, a teacher-in-training, and a crew of undergraduate interns, the Little Shop of Physics visits K–12 classrooms as close to home as Rocky Mountain High School—and as far afield as Azerbaijan. “We don’t do presentations; we don’t show students science,” the troupe’s Web site proclaims. “We help them do science.” And with forty school visits, ten workshops for K–12 teachers, two weeklong field trips, an annual open house event at CSU, and even a television show on a station operated by the city’s Poudre School District, Jones and the Little Shop of Physics bring hands-on science to more than 15,000 students per year. “Kids do an awful lot of sitting in chairs and listening to people tell them things,” says Jones, whose idea for the outreach program came from a rather fruitless day as a visiting lecturer in an eighth-grade classroom. “I don’t think it’s natural.” After boring his charges that morning with a formal presentation—even though it fizzed and popped—he gave them a chance to try some of the experiments themselves, and they went from blasé to beguiled in an instant, he recalls. Jones’ educational mission became clear: “We make an environment where students have freedom to interact with the world in a way that’s more reasonable for them.” Physics, says Jones and the Little Shop entourage, need not be reserved for budding Einsteins; science—real, cutting-edge science—should not be confined to textbooks, lectures, or, as Jones puts it, “a fancy-pants piece of science equipment.” It can be revealed in kitchens, on baseball fields, and in the curious eyes and hands of every child. “Kids are scientists from the very beginning,” says Cara Cummings, the 2006–07 academic year’s Little Shop teacher-in-training. Hence the group’s ultimate goal: to deliver learning in a way that fits a child’s self-directed sensibilities. (The approach, it turns out, works pretty well with adults, too). “It’s not natural for kids to sit still,” says Nisse Deen, a CSU senior and a Little Shop staff member for the majority of her undergraduate career. “If they sit still, they’re going to find something else to do other than pay attention.” But when kids are set loose in this particular playground, she adds, they’ll find that not only is physics tremendously exciting, it’s also “something that anybody and everybody can experience.” SEPTEMBER 2007 EDUTOPIA 51
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