Science Spectacular!

The Shorewood Hills Elementary School (grades K-5) in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted a Science Spectacular fair on April 9, 2005. Science exhibits on a variety of topics in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics were set up in classrooms by volunteers from the University of Wisconsin. There were also some poster presentations by elementary students (eg. "How to Pin a Bug"). The Spalding lab outfitted one classroom with a Discover Plants! exhibit. During the 3-hour fair, at least 75 students and parents visited the Discover Plants! exhibit, where they saw familiar and unfamiliar plants, peered through microscopes at living and fixed plant material, fed carnivorous plants, watched videos, and planted barley and cucumber seeds in clear plastic tubes so germination and seedling development could be observed at home. Hopefully the following pictures capture the interest the and enthusiasm of the visitors. The collective appreciation of plant biology was surely impacted for the better by the three hour affair, the chief organizers of which were grad students Tessa Durham and Nick Stephens. Candace Randall, Zhi Qi, Guosheng Wu, and Edgar Spalding also helped. Click here to see what we included in our exhibit. photos by Edgar Spalding

Isaac Newton greets at the entrance.	Nick explains how to sow seeds in a clear tube for watching growth at home.
The planting table got crowded quickly...	...and stayed crowded.
DNA in one tube, seeds in another...the birth of a biologist	A table with a variety of plants, both useful and unusual, familiar and not...
...attracts a crowd.	Tricking carnivorous plants like the Venus fly trap with a dead fly on a string is irresistible...
...and must be tried for oneself.	Learning how pitcher plants get their nitrogen is a little scary for boys...
...and girls.	Probably her first look at a shoot apical meristem
..and his first look at a root tip.	...maybe Mom's first look, too.