Family night excites students about science

Everywhere you look, there is science.

The TV, the lights, even the behind-the-scenes of this newspaper are products of science.

A couple weeks ago, my school held a Family Science Night where the families of fourth- and fifth-grade students could come to the school cafeteria.

The idea was to get kids excited about science, and some of them could get ideas for a science project.

There were many different stations with students from Flagler College, and volunteers from St. Francis Wildlife Association, Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science, Tallahassee Astronomy Society, Leon County Extension Agency, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the Challenger Center.

At one station you could take a pan with some flour, a yard stick, and a marble and hold them at certain lengths to see if a crater is bigger if it comes from farther away.

At another station, you could take certain ingredients and put them in a bag and shake them up to make ice cream. It was pretty good!
There was also a booth with a Van de Graaff generator. That is a big object that conducts electricity, and can shock you.

It was so fun to see other people cry out when they touched the generator.

At another station, you took a balloon and rubbed it on someone's shoulder and then using the static electricity, youcould pick up packing material and salt and pepper.

One of my favorite stations was where you could put on special glasses and see rainbows because the glasses basically break up all the lights that make up something.

We got to look at different gases through the glasses — which looked pretty neat.

There were many other stations, including one with an owl, a snake and a young alligator. I like science, and I think Family Science Night was a great idea.