One by one, plopping into the water, the little balls vanished. UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering PhD Akansha Gupta nodded for the little girl to reach into the water.
It was full of little balls, completely invisible, but still there. There was only one possible solution: Magic.
“Have you heard of science?” Gupta asked.
The little girl nodded.
Gupta, a Bio- and Immunoengineering PhD student, was one of 18 UChicago PME graduate students who shared interactive science demonstrations at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry as part of the yearly MSI STEM Showcase. The event, free to all attendees with museum admission, is part of a slate of offerings from UChicago PME’s Science Communications Program that break down the walls between University of Chicago labs and the South Side Chicago community.
“The Showcase is where it all comes together,” said Assistant Dean of Education and Outreach Laura Rico-Beck. “We spend the first year of the Science Communications Program learning how to make science accessible to any audience – and then you watch these researchers read the room, adapt on the fly, and meet each person exactly where they are. It’s genuinely exciting to see.”
Gupta said these programs – whether for kids like the Showcase or through the programs aimed at teens or adults – have made her a better scientist, honing her ability to communicate both in and out of the lab.
“In the lab, people toss around a lot of jargon,” Gupta said. “It’s nice to figure out how can I make my work accessible to everyone, whether or not they already know the science. I feel like a 5-year-old is a perfect starting audience for that.”
But beyond reaching out to the community and honing communication skills, another factor drew many of the PhD students to a busy science museum on a Saturday morning.
“It’s so much fun for me to get kids to see that things that sound magical can be very simple to explain,” said Quantum PhD student Rahaf Youssef, who ran a demonstration comparing waves in water and light waves. “They get to play with it, and they get to see it, and they get to ask questions, and they get to see that science is not scary.”
Attendee Antonio, age 10, said the demonstrations dovetailed with what he is learning in school, particularly a display showing how different materials either bob or plummet in a fishtank.
“I like the Sink or Float because, in school, we are learning about density and mass, so we’re basically learning about matter. I like that,” he said.
That connection to science is what the yearly Showcase – and other UChicago PME Science Communications programs like the No Small Matter Molecular Engineering Fair, Battery Day and the Junior Science Cafés at neighborhood middle schools – were built to foster.
“A lot of people see science as this inaccessible thing, only meant for the smartest people,” said Bio- and Immunoengineering PhD student Bernice Lozada. “But in reality, it’s everywhere in the world and it’s for everyone.”
It is also a chance for the graduate students to help pass the torch, sparking the same curiosity that had led them to a life in science.
“When I was a kid, I remember walking around the garden asking my mother, ‘Hey, why are plants green? Why is the sky blue? Why do the stars twinkle at night?’” said Quantum PhD student Eeshan Ketkar.
“Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” said Materials for Sustainability PhD student Athena Christodoulou, whose demonstration showed how polymers can defy gravity by pulling themselves upward out of a beaker. “I can be working in the lab for many, many hours each week – have some cool discoveries, lots of failures. But if I don’t communicate that outside, whether it’s with my colleagues, my professors, at a conference, or with the general public, no one’s really going to know what’s going on.”
While science doesn’t exist in a vacuum, some of the experiments did. One experiment, which showed how a burning candle consuming the oxygen under a glass container actually can slurp up a surrounding liquid, was the favorite display of the day for attendee Kyle, age 10.
Kyle’s brother Logan, 7, wasn’t sure which UChicago PME demonstration was his favorite.
“I don’t know, because we haven’t done all of it yet,” he said, gazing across the displays at all the glowing, oozing, blipping, vibrating, floating, vanishing, humming, flashing science left to explore.