“How do you open young minds to the wonders of science? For starters, you introduce them to a physicist who seems more like a magician, then you let them go wherever their natural curiosity takes them. That was the whole idea behind the BICS Science Fair,” says Science Fair committee member, Wendy Cellik. “Get them excited about the possibilities of science and let them choose where to go with it.”
Long before 70 students wowed their peers with projects ranging from wind turbulence to germ detection, the students at BICS were energized about science with in-class sessions, led by Marcello Pavan, a physicist from Triumf Laboratories.
Armed with gadgets and doo-dads and a serious sense of fun, Marcello showed the students how electricity creates magnets and how magnets can be used to create electricity, a mind-bending concept that most adults struggle with (despite the majority of our province’s electricity relying on exactly that principle).
Watching the kids when the magnets levitated during the electricity and magnetism demonstration, you could see they were hooked. For students who had yet to be sparked by the subject, science changed from a boring topic to something cool and (gasp) fun.
How did it do that? Can you make it shoot up higher? What happens if you put all of them on?
The next task at hand was funnelling all that curiosity and energy into topics that interested the students. That’s where the teachers and parents made it happen, helping students conduct their experiments at home and bring that learning back to BICS to present to their peers at the Science Fair.
“That’s where so much of the learning happens,” says Bowen Island Community School principal Scott Slater, who marvelled at the diversity of topics at this year’s Science Fair. “When kids take what they discovered and share it with their peers, it demonstrates their engagement with the topic and so much about science is about communicating results with others, including people unfamiliar with the topic.”
Students from Grade 1 to 7 presented their findings to their peers during the Science Fair day at the school and to parents and community members during the evening open house where they received feedback from volunteer judges and an official Science Fair medal.
And to cap off the Science Fair festivities, onlookers counted down as brave participants donned their safety goggles and launched an egg from the ground to a standing target 15 feet away for the Second Annual Egg Challenge.
Thank you to everyone who made our celebration of science possible!
