Students Revel in Science ‘Wizardry’

Children are fiddling with water balloons, splattering colorful liquids and getting whipped by flying streams of toilet paper during class this week in Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Lost Hills.

But there’s no need for parents to worry. It’s all part of a special hands-on science lesson for kids of the Las Virgenes Unified School District sponsored by the Nickelodeon cable TV show, “Mr. Wizard’s World,” and Falcon Cable.

At Willow Elementary in Agoura Hills on Monday, Heather Dailide, an “assistant” to Mr. Wizard, performed experiments illustrating water surface tension and air pressure.

Calling on members of the audience as helpers, Dailide delighted the kindergarten through fifth-grade crowds from Willow and the nearby Sumac Elementary School with her dramatic presentations of some everyday phenomenon.

Water is held together by surface tension, Dailide explained, as second-grader Malcolm Jones held up a cup containing a green liquid and quickly poured it straight into a bowl about 2 feet below.

“Water is held in a column by surface tension,” Dailide said.

To demonstrate the tremendous power of air pressure, Dailide had children try to force a large yellow water balloon into the much smaller mouth of a glass jar. The children couldn’t do it--the pressure exerted by the air molecules in the jar was too great.

But after Dailide depleted the jar of oxygen with a scrap of burning paper, the balloon stretched out and dropped easily through.

“Have you ever wondered why airplanes stay up in the air?” Dailide asked. To show how air pressure can allow objects to defy gravity, she used a leaf blower to levitate a rubber ball.

She then aimed the roaring machine at a roll of toilet paper, showing how air pressure can move objects. As boys and girls in the audience fell over with screaming laughter, streams of rapidly unfurling tissue flew straight across and covered second-grader Jordan Moss, who was standing about 10 feet away.

The presentation was “neat,” said Carly Jacobson, a fourth-grader at Willow. “They used different experiments and you didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Devyn Silverstein, a Sumac fourth-grader, said he learned that “air pressure is one of the . . . strongest things on earth.”

The week of presentations is part of a nationwide tour to promote the long-running TV show and to “give back to the community,” said Jeannette Scovill, Falcon Cable’s director of programming. Similar assemblies will be held today through Friday at elementary schools in Calabasas and Hidden Hills.

Brent Noyes, Willow’s principal, praised the demonstrations for their educational value. “Our kids are very energized by the science presentations,” Noyes said. “They have lots of it in the classroom and this connects it all together.”