Liftoff! LABRats Takes Flight

Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.
MacArthur Fellow
Founder and Executive Director
Society for Amateur Scientists
Creator-LABRats

On 26 January 2006 LABRats become much more than just a good idea. Thirteen kids, 10 boys and 3 girls ages 11-15, came together to form Synergy Triple Alpha and hold the first LABRats meeting ever.

Figure 1. Founding members of Synergy ααα. Top from left: Oscar, Derek, Chad, Laura, Jim, Keegan, Amanda and Dr. Shawn. Bottom from left: Ted, Jason, Kyle, Dylan, Jack and Ben.

The LABRats pilot program is now underway! It's organized under the East Greenwich Parks and Recreations Department and will run for either 8 or 16 weeks, depending on what we learn and how much I decide to revise at the end of the first 8 weeks.

This pilot program is intended to be even more of an education for me than for the kids. LABRats itself is an experiment. For the first eight weeks, I'll be testing new concepts in material, methods and content that will eventually build the full LABRats program. All the meetings are being videotaped by a professional videographer to provide an unbiased record of what works and what does not.

Here's a brief summary of what's happened so far and what I've learned from it.

Week One

I organized Synergy Tri-Alpha in four steps:

1) I formed the new recruits into three Groups, putting all the girls together and distributing the kids by total cumulative age. That is, I make the Groups as equal in number as I could and then distributed the kids so that the sum of the ages of the kids in each of the three Groups was as nearly equal as I could make it.

2) Then I arbitrarily made the two eldest kids in each Group the Group Leaders and Assistant Group Leaders. All these assignments were made before the meeting started and therefore before I had met the kids. (This approach caused some social problems between the girls that I had not anticipated. Next time I'll assign the Groups in week one. Then, in week two or three I'll let each Group pick its own leaders.)

3) After welcoming the kids to the organization and assigning them to their Groups, I explained the point system--how every member earns points towards a cool prize for themselves and their Group by showing up on time, answering questions, and doing experiments at home. Telling them that the winning Group would earn each member10 iTunes downloads got them all really excited. (Finding the right prizes to motivate the kids is also very much an experiment.) The point system gives them immediate rewards and has so far kept the kids motivated.

4) Then I asked each Group to select a special name, one that reflected the personality of its members. Figuring there would be a lot of wrangling about the name, I had allowed seven minutes for this activity. But when I announced that the first Group to agree on a name would win 10 points, all three made their decision in less then 40 seconds! Here are the names they selected:

Radioactive Cows
Atom Splitters
Strange Quarks

I have an artist working on cool logos for each Group. The Atom Splitters is the girl's Group (three girls and one boy. Girls have both leadership positions.) I hope that a Group emblem will help solidify Group identity and a sense of belonging.

For the first program, we explored visual and audio illusions, talked about the program and the nature of science, and generally had a good time. But we ran out of steam at the end, and I was frankly worried that 90 minutes may be too long to hold a Synergy meeting together.

Week Two

So I decided to talk a lot less the second week, and let the kids try to answer a question I posed by doing their own experiments. My demonstration posed a question about air pressure. The experiments required the use of a hot plate, and although we blew circuit breakers all over the room, we did get every Group working independently on their own projects.

I also decided to experiment with a period of free time during which I would provide some interesting science-related activities for the members to do on their own. So I brought along a dissecting microscope and a Shop Vac for the kids to have fun with. At one point during the free time I asked who wanted to be vacuum packed, and everybody lined up! Each sat down inside a large plastic trash sack, and cinched it up tight. When I used the vacuum to remove the air and seal the bag tightly around them, most of the members squealed with delight. It's one demonstration of the power of the atmosphere that no one will soon forget!

Then I shouted, "Where are my engineers?" When two young men presented themselves, I handed them my cordless screwdriver. "Go tear the Shop Vac apart and tell me how it works," I said. "COOL!" one shouted and both ran to the Shop Vac. Within seconds, six other boys joined in and within minutes they had stripped the Shop Vac to its components. But they couldn't figure out how it worked. So, pointing to the relevant blade, I explained the principle of the centrifugal pump in about 8 seconds. You could see the lights flash in their eyes. They really got it. After a telling round of "cools" from that gang, they asked me if they could put it back together. And then they did, only they hooked it up to blow instead of suck, just because they could.

These kinds of "constructive destruction" projects have very strong appeal for lots of kids. However, it is interesting to note that none of the girls got involved in this.

Meanwhile kids were swarming around the microscope, looking at their fingers, their hair, lint from the ground and anything else they could find.

After all that, I pulled everyone together for an introduction to mathematics. I told them I was going to teach them the difference between mathematics and arithmetic and then wrote down the numbers "1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 100 = ?" and asked them if they could add all the numbers together. Most said they could eventually, but they admitted it would be hard to know whether they had gotten the right answer. Then I told them there was a way of doing it in just seconds, and of being absolutely certain that you have the right answer. We scratched around for a few minutes, as they proposed possible avenues, and I discussed them. Then, 12-year-old Jack, my hero Jack, of the Radioactive Cows, piped up in the back with, "Well, you could add 1 to 99, then 2 to 98, then 3 to 97...". The boy got 10 points on the spot! Just 120 seconds later everyone had the answer—5050, and they were all certain of it.

They now all know the difference between arithmetic and mathematics.

This more freewheeling activity-based meeting worked much better than the first one, and it was much easier to prepare for. But I still talked too much!

Figure 2. Dr. Shawn kibitzes with the Atom Splitters, one of three Groups that make up Synergy ααα.

Week Three

This week I wanted to experiment with a current events program. So I took photos of the new "Lost World" find in Indonesia and prepared 15 minutes on the discovery. None of the kids had heard about it, which disappointed me a bit. I was hoping that most of them would have been told about it by their science teachers or parents, or through their own newsgroups.

Then we talked about positive feedback and what happens to systems that obey the "the bigger you are, the faster you grow" rule. This had an experiment that I asked each Group to do. The experiment was, I think, too similar to one that I did last week, and the kids didn't really warm to it. From this I learned the importance of keeping each week's program as novel as possible.

I decided to test out a more freewheeling 15 minute free time period. I brought rubber band powered airplanes for each Group as well as the famous "screaming cans" demonstration (a cool way to make the most obnoxious sound you've every heard come out of two aluminum-drink cans). Nobody touched the cans or the microscope. Everyone was playing with their airplanes! That activity gave me a great chance to ask questions, like if the shape of the wing is supposed to be the thing that allows a plane to fly, how come these planes fly with flat wings? How can stunt pilots fly upside down? I suggested experiments in aerodynamics that several of the Groups carried out. I awarded points for the best flight, and kibitzed about how to make the planes fly well. Everybody had a great time.

Then we returned to the question of adding the sums of 1 - 100. I led the kids through a general analysis of the problem by using a simple visual proof. We proved that for 1 + 2 + ... + N, the general solution was N(N+1)/2. (My thanks to my good friend Professor Ingrid Daubechies, who turned me on to this wonderful proof.) My intention was to experiment with teaching these students those general principles that scientists and mathematicians use everyday to solve real-world problems and make discoveries. This experience convinced me that we should stick more to fun demonstrations of cool principles and less on deep foundational methods during the main meetings. The foundational methods should probably be left for study in the science badge program and for work with mentors. There's still a lot of work to do here to find the best method of teaching this important material.

Plenty of kids stuck around after the meeting to watch a movie I brought showing an atomic bomb test. The room wasn't clear of kids until almost 9:00 PM. Over all, it was a very educational experience. Especially for me!

Week Four

I'm still planning this meeting. However, the members are going to learn how to take blood pressure and how blood pressure changes in response to exercise (both before and after exercise. Blood pressure does not return to its original value immediately after the heart recovers from exercise. If you want to know what it does return to, you'll have to do the experiment yourself!)

Also, I'm going to announce new ways to earn points. For example, learn how to tell the difference between human hair and dog hair under the microscope, and you'll earn 5 points. Identify the guard cells on a leaf, and you'll earn five points, and so on. I'm trying to find simple ways to get the members to explore their own questions between meetings. I'll keep you posted.

There's no meeting next week. (School holiday and therefore a mandatory holiday for all programs organized by the Park and Rec department.) But in week five of the program I am going to begin testing the response of the members to email reminders.

Online Membership Tops 14,000!

Wow! What else can I say?

LABRats Server and LABRats.org

LABRats now has its own server in operation. And Greg Crawford, our wonderful volunteer and supporter, has transferred his database code to it and is conducting real-world tests of the system. Greg copied the SAS LABRats home page over LABRats.org to create an embryonic LABRats site. I'll be posting pictures of the meetings shortly to the LABRats.org web site. Much more is coming in the next few months on this front so stay tuned.

There's a great deal more to report, but I have a lesson to prepare for, so I'll sign off here. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to call me at 401-398-7001.