Chemistry Camp web page<\/a>.)<\/p>\nChemistry Camp, funded through the Pfizer community grants program, offers many of the things experts recommend to boost girls\u2019 interest in science \u2013 plenty of hands-on experience, role models and encouragement. Each day features a mix of fun interactive experiments, guest scientists, and field trips \u2013 including dissecting squid at Mystic Aquarium and conducting water testing during a tour of the Narragansett Bay Commission water treatment plant in Providence.<\/p>\n
And the week\u2019s experiments would tax any cleanup crew. The middle schoolers, grades six through eight, will build and launch their own rockets, fashioning fuel to generate liftoff from sugar and potassium nitrate. They\u2019ll concoct their own slime, testing ingredient ratios to make the stretchiest and stickiest slime. They\u2019ll also create oobleck \u2013 a liquid from water and corn starch that becomes a solid under pressure \u2013 to fill a kiddy pool and take turns running across it.<\/p>\n
The girls will be doing more than just following recipes. Middle schoolers, Levine says, are the right age to move beyond \u201ccookbook\u201d science and into understanding how and why an experiment works. \u201cWe do soda candy explosions,\u201d she says, \u201cand we test which candy will create the biggest explosion and capture that in a balloon with all that air that\u2019s generated from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teresa Mako, a fourth-year graduate student in chemistry, is one of a half-dozen of Levine\u2019s graduate students who help lead the camp. The Deerfield, Mass.,<\/strong> resident, says she enjoys being a part of the camp, especially helping on field trips to expose the girls to science beyond chemistry.<\/p>\n\u201cI guess the main reason I like helping out is there still is a stigma against women in the sciences,\u201d she says. \u201cBy building a basis from the beginning that women in science is normal and that we can do everything that men can do, we will get to more of an equal footing overtime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanie Racicot, of Worcester, Mass.,<\/strong> a second-year graduate student in chemistry, looks forward to helping out for a couple of reasons. \u201cYou get a break from being in the lab all day,\u201d she says. \u201cYou get to do these fun science experiments with the kids and you get to be a kid for a week.\u201d<\/p>\nAlso, her father, Rob, a chemistry professor at Worcester State University, is one of the guest scientists, and puts on a chemistry demonstration that feels something like a magic show.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a show that he put on for me and my brother while we were growing up,\u201d says Racicot. \u201cHe\u2019s been telling me my whole life that science is cool and it\u2019s all around us. I think it\u2019s important that especially young girls have that in their life, someone telling them you can do this and science is important and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chemistry Camp runs 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day, April 15 through 19, in the Multicultural Student Services Center, 74 Lower College Road, on the Kingston Campus. Media are encouraged to visit the camp on Thursday afternoon from 1 to 3 p.m. when students will build their own rockets, or Friday afternoon from 2 to 4 p.m. when experiments with oobleck will take place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 1, 2019 \u2013 Instead of taking a break from learning, 40 middle school girls from around Rhode Island will spend public school vacation week at the University Rhode Island April 15 through 19 to take part in Chemistry Camp, a program designed to boost girls\u2019 interest in science This is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-74665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}