Three Union students joined Priscilla Scaife, widow of popular Chemistry Professor Charles Scaife – known as the “Johnny Appleseed” of science – at Schenectady’s Lincoln Elementary School, where they carried on the tradition of introducing the magic of science to children.
Wearing a white lab coat decorated with felt balloons, Scaife mesmerized the crowd in the gymnasium with everyday items to demonstrate scientific principles in a way that taps into kids’ natural curiosity. In one experiment, she showed what happens when heavy red syrup, white milk and blue oil get together in a jar (they don’t mix).
Elsewhere in the old brick school on Albany Street during National Chemistry Week, Olga Davydenko ’08, Laura Castellano ’09 and Bowman Potter ’11 provided hands-on lessons in three different classrooms.
“I had a lot of fun,” said Davydenko, president of the Chemistry Club, who taught mixed-age students in Fallon Van Schaick’s class about aerodynamics and air pressure using ping pong balls, funnels, brightly colored bags and straws.
“The message was that when air goes faster above a surface than below that surface, it creates a negative pressure above this surface, which creates a life. This is exactly how airplanes fly.”
Laura Castellano, the Chemistry Club secretary, performed one experiment that always draws a wow. Working in Beth Joy’s 4th grade class, she filled a Ziploc bag with water and then pushed a pencil into it. Because the polymer seals right up, no one ever gets wet.
“I also showed them how two different balls which looked and felt the same had different properties – one bounced and one didn’t – due to the different polymers they were made of,” said Laura. “And I demonstrated several uses of polymers, such as in diapers to absorb the liquid.”
Bowman Potter ’11 showed a fifth grade class a series of experiments about the differences in density.
The Scaifes’ enormously popular traveling science fair has captivated tens of thousands of youngsters in schools across the country for more than a decade, and locally, teams of Union students have always enjoyed mixing learning and fun with the Scaifes.
“Charlie” Scaife, who specialized in inorganic chemistry, joined the Chemistry Department in 1972 and retired in 2001. He taught a range of courses in inorganic chemistry and designed laboratory experiments for chemistry majors at Union. He and Priscilla, a social worker, caught the eye of the national media with their interactive science instruction, inspiring stories in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor and other publications.
“My whole purpose is to say science is easy, science can be fun,” Priscilla Scaife said Thursday, as students in Larry Grimmer’s first grade class eagerly awaited her presentation in the gym-turned-laboratory.
And if the open faces, raised hands and audible enthusiasm that reverberated in the classrooms are any indication, the program continues to be a big success.
“It’s wonderful for our kids to have the Union students come in and teach,” said Lincoln principal Alan Zemser, who credited teacher Jocelyn Pranis for bring Scaife back to the school after a hiatus following her husband’s death in 2003. “They’ve been doing it for quite some time. Sometimes when somebody from the outside comes in, it brings a different level of excitement.”