Summer is Here! UBC Let's Talk Science Partnership Program E-Newsletter vol. 8, issue 8 June 2005 ______________________________________________________ In this issue: - Volunteer of the Month - LTSPPVABBQ - Year-End Evaluation Form - Additional Summer Volunteer Opportunities - Langley Nature and Science Company Event - GSS Saturday Science #2 - Class Visits - Science Joke of the Month ______________________________________________________ May Volunteer of the Month Congratulations to Jeff Fletcher!!! Jeff did 3 outstanding visits to his grade 2/3 class at Sir Richard McBride Annex in May. Jeff came up with all kinds of cool, innovative activities to do with his students. His activities varied from lessons in buoyancy, evaporation and solubility, to having the kids do an interpretative water cycle dance, to a neat bear habitat game. His outstanding activities are now posted on our website--check them out! http://www.gss.ubc.ca/LTS/activities.html As always, our volunteer of the month receives a $20 gift card at the UBC Bookstore. Enjoy! ______________________________________________________ Let's Talk Science Partnership Program Volunteer Appreciation BBQ We had a fantastic turn-out for our BBQ at Koerner's Pub on June 16th. Everybody who came received a door prize, good eats, free beer and, of course, great company! Congratulations to Patrice who received the grand prize--a digital camera! We'd like to thank all the companies who generously donated door prizes for our BBQ: University Pharmacy (in the village) Helly Hanson (in the village) DVD Zone (in the village) Hime Sushi (4463 10th Ave, near Safeway) Thanks to everyone who was able to make it out, it was great to be able to put some names to faces! ______________________________________________________ Year-End Evaluation Form As the year end is quickly approaching, we'd like to ask (aka beg and plead) that you take a few minutes out of your busy schedules to fill in a year-end evaluation form. The forms really help us to improve the program and we've already received lots of great feedback. The forms are available online (http://www.gss.ubc.ca/LTS/ve2.html) or you can email it to us at: lts@gss.ubc.ca ______________________________________________________ *****VERY IMPORTANT***** Additional Summer Opportunities The Killarney Community Centre is putting on a Day Camp for 50-70 kids aged 6-12 in August. They are looking for 3-4 volunteers to come by on August 10th for a couple hours. The theme that week is Wilderness Adventures, so they were hoping we could incorporate some fun science into it. Please email us if you are interested in this opportunity! Dave already sent out an email outlining other summer opportunities. If you are interested in helping out with any of the following, please let us know! 1) Aboriginal Soccer Tournament, Saturday July 2nd 2) GSS Saturday Science Day #3, sometime mid August 3) CEDAR Summer Day Camp, mid August 4) Harry Potter Day at the Bookstore ______________________________________________________ Langley Nature and Science Company Event On Saturday, June 18th, LTS volunteers Linda Hanson, Patrick Wong, Alfredo Franco-Cea and Lisa McDonnell ventured out to the Nature and Science Company in Langley. The store provides fun and educational science oriented products for kids of all ages. Our group prepared three activities to entertain and engage kids in front of the store. The goal was to draw attention to the store, get kids excited about science, and reach some teachers in Langley to help expand the LTS program outside of Vancouver. The volunteers lead very hands-on activities dealing with chemical reactions and pH, the properties of matter, and how to build circuits and electromagnets. The kids, and volunteers, had a great time! This was a new and unique LTS experience, but we hope to get back out there again sometime to draw a larger crowd and more attention to our great LTS program! ______________________________________________________ GSS Saturday Science #2 On Saturday, June 18th, LTS volunteers were also at the GSS Saturday Science Event on campus! Marta Szabat, Andrea Tegzes and Tracy Tucker did a 2 hour workshop on a Nature theme for the children of graduate students. It was a fantastic event for everybody involved. Marta, Andrea and Tracy did some neat activities with photosynthesis, the water cycle and even had the kids build beaver dams! To top it off, the kids were treated to dry ice Mr Freezies. Great job! ______________________________________________________ Activity Reports May and June have been busy months for our volunteers! A lot of great activities have been conducted and many of them are available (or will be soon!) on the LTS website: http://www.gss.ubc.ca/LTS/activities.html It's never too late to fill in an activity report! Please fill one in ASAP online (http://www.gss.ubc.ca/LTS/ve1.html) or email it to us at: lts@gss.ubc.ca The Activity Evaluations are really important. They allow us to recognize you for all the great work you do, keep us informed as to what everyone is up to and helps us get funding so we can keep the program running (and expanding!) successfully. Luana Avila and Chiho Hatakeyama explored sound and how it is transmitted using dry ice, a string telephone and a ruler with their grade 2/3 class. Lindsey Laycock explored nutrition with her class. Katie Dinelle went on a field trip to Science World and did a hands-on physics activity with her grade 1 class. Curtis Lam introduced his class to acids and bases using cabbage juice and phenol red. Jeff Fletcher explored surface tension and buoyancy and played a bear habitat game with his grade 2/3 class. Sarah Lidstone and John Howland did some neat activities with rat brain cells under the microscope and looked at knee-jerk reflexes with their grade 1/2/3 class. Pamela O and Gina Rossi went on a field trip to the Pacific Museum of the Earth with their grade 3 class. Yang Zhao explored the genetics of hair and eye colour with her grade 1 class. Heather Candon looked at the ecology of your classroom by swabbing dirty surfaces and incubating the plates to see what grows with her grade 11 class. Jed Shimizu did 2 neat activities with his grade 1/2 class. They looked at how Baking Soda + Vinegar = gas and salt + sugar = crystals. Jed also made Flubber (from Borax and glue) and Oobleck (from cornstarch, food colouring and water) and they did neat activities with coloured celery and fingerprint fun. Susan Dean discussed Science and Policy: Recreational oyster harvesting limits in BC with her grade 2/3 class. Nicholas Dube inoculated plates with bacteria from different sources around the school and looked at gummi bear genetics with his grade 3 class. Jenni Dickinson used a photo slide show to talk about life at a mineral exploration camp in northern BC with her grade 5 class. They also looked at rocks and used HCL to identify calcite. Carmen Cheung did a Volcano Demonstration using a volcano model, books and videos with her kindergarten class. Mya Warren explored Playland physics with her grade 5 class. They used demos to show inertia and discussed how this relates to rides at Playland. Jonathan Levesque looked at Force and Motion: Inertia and Projectile Motion using a teddy bear on a cart and catapults with his grade 1 class. Justin LeBlanc took his grade 6/7 class on a field trip to Lynn Valley, including a visit to the Ecology Centre. Maryam Mofidpoor explored how paper is made, conservation, and recycling with her class. Patrick Wong and his grade 2 class looked at matter and temperature using 3 cool activities: Hot sips, The Amazing Water Trick and To Float or Not To Float. Erika, Dave, Katerina, Katherine and Peter visited their grade 6/7 class at Seymour Elementary and did a cool activity building catapults. Rebecca Goulding also went to Seymour Elementary and did a slide show on cool outdoor activities with the grade 6/7 class. ______________________________________________________ Science Joke of the Month There was this biologist who was doing some experiments with frogs. He was measuring just how far frogs could jump. So he puts a frog on a line and says "Jump frog, jump!". The frog jumps 2 feet. He writes in his lab book: 'Frog with 4 legs - jumps 2 feet'. Next he chops off one of the legs and repeats the experiment. "Jump frog jump!" he says. The frog manages to jump 1.5 feet. So he writes in his lab book: 'Frog with 3 legs - jumps 1.5 feet'. He chops off another and the frog only jumps 1 foot. He writes in his book: 'Frog with 2 legs jumps 1 foot'. He continues and removes yet another leg. " Jump frog jump!" and the frog somehow jumps a half of a foot. So he writes in his lab book again: 'Frog with one leg - jumps 0.5 feet'. Finally he chops off the last leg. He puts the frog on the line and tells it to jump. "Jump frog, jump!". The frog doesn't move. "Jump frog, jump!!!". Again the frog stays on the line. "Come on frog, jump!". But to no avail. The biologist finally writes in his book: 'Frog with no legs - goes deaf' __________________________________________________ Erika Eliason, David Kent & Beth Simpson Coordinators, UBC Let's Talk Science Partnership Program University of British Columbia 2205 East Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 Phone: (604) 222-1025 Fax: (604) 822-5143 Email: lts@gss.ubc.ca Web: http://www.gss.ubc.ca/LTS/