Corral Drive's hands-on event turns science into family fun

By Kayla Gahagan, Journal staff | Tuesday, November 11, 2008

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Jarod Keene made a beeline for the football field, racing to the edge of the grass and stopping just as a South Dakota Life Flight helicopter hovered into a landing, blowing wind and bits of grass into his face.

“That was awesome,” he said, his friends nodding in agreement.

Keene, a 10-year-old from Corral Drive Elementary School, was one of hundreds of students who took part in the school’s Science Night on  Oct. 23.

While community participants, including the National Guard, biohazard unit and South Dakota School of Mines & Technology offered students hands-on science experiences outside, almost a dozen more stations hosted parents and students inside.

“It’s to learn and have fun and look at things of science that aren’t a beaker,” said Patty Coppedge, organizer of the event and a member of the school’s PTA.

Students and parents made their way around the stations in the gym, stopping to touch a cow’s heart with a gloved hand, watch a volcanic mountain erupt with baking soda or listen as Becky Svalstad with Wildlife Experiences explain how a Eurasian Eagle Owl can turn its head 270 degrees – with one of the owls perched on her arm.

“We’re lucky here in South Dakota because kids go outside,” Svalstad said, of learning about science. “But in other places, kids aren’t as connected, so any chance to reconnect people is good.”

The science night is the perfect place to get connected, Coppedge said, and some of the students even conducted their own experiments for the night. The students who set up stations participated in the school’s Mad Scientist contest held earlier in the month.

Faith Ehmann drew curious onlookers to her table as she dropped food coloring into cups of milk and then dipped a toothpick of dish detergent into the liquid – causing the color to “run” away from the detergent.

The fat from the milk, she explained, acts as a “holder” for the color, but the fat is dissolved by the soap, causing the color to move or “run.”

Ehmann repeated the experiment, whirling the toothpick in the milk and smiling as the crowd nodded in approval. She came up with the idea for the experiment after an initial idea became too complicated. The science night is a place to come and do what she enjoys, she said.

“I just love science,” she said.

There must have been many students feeling that way, Coppedge said, as the event’s third year drew more students than it did the first two years. Anyone is welcome to come, she said, not just Corral Drive students, and people must have gotten the message. She handed out 500 pairs of gloves for the cow brains and the gymnasium was crowded, but she doesn’t know for sure how many attended.

“I talked to some kids and asked them where they were from and they said, ‘Meadowbrook’ (Elementary School),” she said. “They said, ‘Do we have to leave?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ The more the merrier.”

Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8410 or kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com