A mix of science and magic at the Science Today lecture in the RDS proved a winning formula with students, writes Dick Ahlstrom.
Chemical snowflakes, shrinking marshmallows, baked beans and sausages were all on the menu at the annual Science Today student demonstration lectures held this week at the RDS. The lot was leavened with a healthy mix of magic and pure science.
Presenter Paul McCrory had the primary and secondary level students who attended on Tuesday eating out of the palm of his hand, such was the students' enthusiasm for the subject. The two hugely successful shows demonstrated clearly that if science is presented in the right way students will respond positively.
The Science Today demonstration lectures are designed specifically for students, although those of any age could have enjoyed the show devised by McCrory, of the education consultancy Think-Differently.
"We are not trying to make science fun, we believe that we are letting the fun that is already in science out," he says. That formula clearly worked when McCrory delivered two lectures, one for fifth- and sixth-class pupils and a second for first- to third-year junior cycle students.
Surprisingly, the same science/magic mix worked with both groups. Clearly the fun can be found in science with the right person there to tease it out.
McCrory dealt with a variety of scientific concepts including friction, gravity, air pressure, wave motion, polymers and centrifugal force. What the students saw, however, were interesting experiments about exploding marshmallows, spinning waiter's trays, disposable nappies and vacuum-packed teachers.
The art in McCrory's approach was the way he developed genuine audience participation in the event. He didn't explain how the various experiments worked; he asked the students to work it out for themselves, guiding them towards the correct answer.
He astounded students by getting a round biscuit tin to roll uphill, apparently defying gravity. He asked for likely causes of the phenomenon, with the students suggesting anything from a hidden guinea pig and magnets to invisible strings and remote-controlled motors.
The students also provided the correct answer, a hidden weight that disturbed the tin's centre of gravity, making it travel up a ramp rather than down.
The fast-moving presentation kept students at both lectures engaged throughout, a particular feat given the large group of more than 450 junior cycle students. They especially liked when McCrory shrink-wrapped a press-ganged "volunteer" teacher, Mr Flanagan.
Earlier McCrory had demonstrated how air pressure or lack of it could cause marshmallows to expand or contract, examples of the force exerted by the column of air above us.
He later asked Flanagan to climb into a black plastic bag and then used a vacuum cleaner to extract all the air from the bag, binding the teacher in plastic "like a supermarket turkey". Flanagan emerged unscathed to generous applause from the students.
The artificial snow and the water- absorbing gel experiments were based on the use of sodium polyacrylate. It comes in several forms, a polymer that can hold large volumes of water as used in disposable nappies or as a molecular ring that traps water to produce the "snow" used in Hollywood films.
The snow particularly impressed the students, so much so that the primary pupils queued up at the end of the talk to receive samples of the magic substance.
McCrory thoroughly enjoys what he does. "I love it," he declares. He claims to be naturally shy but says he loses this, becoming a showman when it comes to science experiments delivered as magic.
The Science Today lecture series is jointly organised by The Irish Times and the Royal Dublin Society. It seeks to foster better public understanding of science.