Virginia Tech Science Festival ignites scientific interest in elementary students

Typically we do the Virginia Tech Science Festival, as a single day event. We can't do that right now safely with COVID. And so a better opportunity is to create a number of small field trips throughout the fall. Today we had Indian Valley Elementary School, which brought their fifth, sixth, seventh graders to campus to explore both campus itself and see what it's like to be on campus at Virginia Tech. And also, do you have a STEM activity. Something to explore science, and be scientists. Orion Living Learning Community, put this together for the students. We worked on two activities for our science outreach. One of them was about making lava lamps from Alka-Seltzer tablets, putting oil and water in a bottle and saying, you know, what things actually react with the water instead of the oil. And then the other thing we did is magnetic slime. And so making slime from glue and cornstarch and stuff and then adding iron sulfide, which is attracted to magnets. We know that students start deciding whether they're a person who goes to college well before high school. So bringing students to campus is a great way to help them see themselves as future Hokies and future college students and as future scientists. To big thing for us is we give our students, especially our freshmen, because we have a first-year experience course, a service learning opportunity. So do do some science outreach with kids to talk about science. And also talk about their experience.