Expo Nurtures Kids’ Curiosity
When Linda St-Cyr was a little girl, she asked her parents for a chemistry set. Their response was, “Girls don’t do that.”
When she got a little older, St-Cyr wanted to know how cars worked. She got the same answer.
Now an engineer with Boeing, St-Cyr, 49, said she wants every curious child to be exposed to science. To that end, she coordinated more than 70 experiments at a science fair sponsored by Boeing employees at the Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power plant in Canoga Park.
The Rocketdyne Science Expo, a Valley tradition for more than a decade, gives elementary school children a chance to practice what their teachers preach and exposes them to concepts that will be reinforced later in the classroom.
“You see it first and then someone will tell you the physical theory,” St-Cyr said as she uncoiled a Slinky-like device used in a sound experiment. “It’s the two and they should be in balance. Practice and theory.”
Boeing will welcome more than 1,200 elementary school students this week from the San Fernando, Conejo and Simi valleys. Unlike in their classrooms, students are encouraged to run around, touch and feel and yell and shout. The experiments explore topics such as sound, light, mechanical energy, fluids, heat and magnetics and require hands-on interaction.
“At school we learn about math and science, but we never do anything like the things we do here,” said 9-year-old Alejandro Martinez, a fourth-grader at Camellia Avenue Elementary School in North Hollywood.
One of the more popular tables had the hair on kids’ heads literally standing on end. Scotty MacLeod, a volunteer at the Boeing event who works as a lab technician in the Moorpark College physics department, operated the Van de Graff generator.
The static-electricity gadget allows kids to place their hands on a metal orb as electrons travel up through their fingers, into their arms and out into their hair follicles.
A group of Northridge students from First Presbyterian Weekday School laughed with fifth-grader Jessica Lucatorto, 11, as her sandy brown hair flew up.
“See, science can be fun,” MacLeod said, standing nearby.
He is one of only a few outside volunteers at the expo. More than 170 current and former Boeing employees run the experiments.
Tom Senior, an electronics technician at Boeing, has worked at the expo for four years. He says it makes sense to encourage children to pursue “rocket science.”
“As a technician, I need engineers. These kids are the engineers of the future. They’re going to put us on Mars,” Senior said.
Maybe the students will not grow up to be rocket scientists, St-Cyr said, but at least they will know it is an option.
“[My parents] tried to convince me I couldn’t play with these things,” she said. “Well, I showed them.”