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Providence, Rhode Island [Brown University] — Hundreds of local high school students immersed themselves in the world of science at this year’s STEM Day at Brown.
This annual event serves as a gateway for high school students to explore the core principles of science, while also providing a snapshot of academic and student life on college campuses. This year’s event was held on a cold morning in late March and was attended by more than 200 students from five high schools across Rhode Island.
Shortly after 9 a.m., high school students hopped out of yellow school buses and prepared for hands-on workshops and thoughtful discussions about what it’s like to be a scientist in a STEM field. The students, divided into groups, spent much of the day interacting with Brown faculty and students and participating in 12 science sessions held simultaneously in various classrooms and laboratories on College Hill.
Each session was structured as a mini-lesson. There was a brief lecture at the beginning, followed by a practical part where students applied new insights, saw what they had learned in action, and connected how the concepts worked in the real world. .
“It helped me understand that [science] It has everything to do with it,” said Cindy Pagan, a 10th grade student who attended a session about gel-like biopolymers. Along with his classmates at Central High School in Providence, Pagan learned about the chemical reactions required to create this type of gel. In this case, students observed that when alginate is mixed with a calcium ion solution, a fluffy gel forms.
“I had seen something similar on cooking shows, so it got me thinking about how science relates to cooking and beyond,” Pagan said.
For other students, it was their first time seeing a chemical reaction. Jaws fell to the floor as a bright green gel formed. “I’m not going to touch that,” one student declared as they gathered around a long table with beakers of mixtures. All it took was one student to reach into the beaker, pick up the gel, and crush it between their fingers to change everyone’s mind.
Other sessions included lessons on 3D printing, the molecular composition of crystals, the human brain, optical engineering, and removing contaminants from food and water. The session was organized by Brown University faculty, staff, and students led by the Chemistry Department and who volunteered for the event.
In a neuroscience demonstration, students from Warwick’s Pilgrim High School received a lesson on how neurons in the brain communicate and got an up-close look at what a real brain looks like. When asked if anyone would like to own a plasticized human brain, 10th grade student Dylan Borges was the first to come forward.
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