Science in schools: It's elementary!

Every Tuesday afternoon, from 4 to 5 p.m., Room 318 of Sisters Elementary School bustles with students learning about - and experimenting with - various areas of science, engineering, physics and natural history. It's the Sisters Science Club (SSC) Discovery Lab.

When Bob Collins of Sisters and his science buddies started thinking about forming a science club in Sisters Country, the idea took off like a rocket to the moon. In the short time the club has been operating, they have touched the lives of just about every age and circumstance around Sisters.

Collins is capturing the curiosity of kids with a collection series of animal bones, skeletons, and mounted specimens in plastic he has on loan from the University of California, Berkeley, scientific storehouse.

On Tuesday, November 6, Bunny Thompson, an enthusiastic SSC member, took 20 or so young science students in Room 318 off in a new direction when she asked the students to define what an engineer does. The question hadn't reached the other side of the room when a hand shot into the air, waving to get attention, and when Bunny pointed to the hand, the owner replied, "An engineer fixes things!"

Thompson was grinning from ear to ear when she said, "Right on!," and then introduced the children to an old engineer from about 2,000 years ago by the name of Archimedes, who shouted, "Eureka!" as he solved his scientific puzzle. She dunked a Barbie doll in a dish of warm water, thereby opening the children's minds to Archimedes' experiments with buoyancy.

She asked the students if the water spilled over from Barbie's tub would weigh as much as the doll did, and, sure enough, it did. She then went on to demonstrate other things that floated, and some that didn't, asking why that was so. Bunny continued on to open the children's minds to the scientific principal of displacement.

To impress the idea of displacement and physics, Thompson and her helpers (AKA Table Captains) - members of the SSC, Mark Thompson (Bunny's husband), John Griffith, Bob Collins, Cal and Marsha Allen, Ron Thorkildson and three seniors from Rima Givot's class at Sisters High School, Holly Chapman, Marissa Bendel and Harley Bowler - provided the students with things to float.

They began with cupcake holders and pennies, placing the pennies one by one in the paper cupcake-holders until the cup sank.

The SSC crew then gave the children aluminum foil and clay and asked them to build boats that would hold more than the paper cups. Anyone with children - or having experience with children when challenged with new ideas - knows how much fun that was.