CHARLESTON, W.Va.— Third and fourth grade students from schools in Eastern Kanawha County were given the opportunity to experience hands-on chemistry and engineering demonstrations Tuesday at the Clay Center in Charleston.
Arclin Amines, a chemical company in Belle, hosted the STEM celebration in honor of Manufacturing Day, which is held on the first Friday of October. Arclin is a producer of many different chemicals that are found in various industries such as agriculture to electronics, which help create many products that are used across the globe.
Heather Henson teaching at a station, photo courtesy of Rachel Coffman
Senior chemist Heather Henson said they love the partnership between Arclin and the Clay Center to teach students cool experiments.
“We’re so proud to partner with them and to be able to provide an opportunity for the children to come, to learn some physical chemistry experiments that they can do at home for a very low cost. We’re talking like corn starch, baking powder and vinegar. So, we’re teaching them some science experiments,” Henson said.
Henson also said that Arclin works with the teachers so they can get the students excited for what they’ll experience at the event.
“Happy to get kids excited about science,” Henson said. “Studies show that you really need to reach kids early and we think third grade is just a perfect time. We work with their teachers too, these are concepts that they’re studying, and so this way they can actually see a hands-on demonstration of it.”
Michael Huff at his density station
Process engineer at Arclin Michael Huff said it’s for the kids and the company.
“Well, it’s a lot of fun and it’s an outreach activity that Arclin has been really passionate about, and it really brings the kids in and gives them an opportunity to use their thinking capabilities and their curiosity,” Huff said.
The 140 students were able to see different chemical reactions and experiments while they were at the event.
“We talk to them about endothermic, so when they can touch the bottle it’s cold, we teach them about exothermic reactions which are hot, which are elephant toothpaste,” Henson said. We talked to them about filtration and engineering, we talked to them about surface science and surface tension, and so we used an example of pepper and dawn dish soap, and it disperses it.”
One specific table, which Huff helped demonstrate, was about density.
“So, our station was focused on liquid density, so we were looking at, essentially the makeups of a lava lamp,” Huff said. “Showing the youngsters what would happen if you mixed oil and water, what they’ll separate, you know the oil will float on top of the water and talked about which liquid was more dense.”
This was the second year that the company has partnered with the Clay Center and Henson said that it keeps on growing.
“Teachers are loving it, we are loving it. Each year it gets bigger and better, and we just get a lot of energy from these kids and seeing the excitement when something clicks,” Henson said. “You know we’ve had teachers who’ve said I’ve never seen that student do that and that’s just overwhelming to me, that just gives me cold chills.”
This is such an exciting event Henson said the company has made a YouTube channel for the kids, so they can have a place to go to when they want to recreate the experiments at home.