of awe, of revelation, and of joy

 

Science Day '23

self-doubt and debilitating comparison to others

shouts at middle schoolers of the emptiness of the glass,

so we start off Science Day

with the power of a keynoter

who cited chapter and verse of the science,

a science that argues how to reorient perspective,

how to refill what can feel empty,

how to re-find the rightness that can permeate our world

if we but allow it, provide for it,

of the potential of science to save us from our mistakes,

most of the presentation stressed the reverence 

we can feel while on a walk in nature,

in the extraordinary beauty and truth the universe reveals,

through our new telescopes outside our atmosphere,

in the natural glories of sky and place,

and how a close-up look at a leaf of grass,

or the smallest of animal and bacteria, 

can shock us back into awe,

our students then branched out into workshops:

making a camera obscura, a rocket powered by water and air,

exploring how gravity pulls at differently weighted balls,

AI, DNA, the power of attitude and number,

what to know about drugs and how to know about water,

the miracle of plants "seeing,"

walking the solar system to scale,

how the visual can be used to speak clearly,

what fun and understanding can be revealed

by tricks in the kitchen,

half of the middle school shared 

individual experiments they had done:

asking a question of the universe,

positing a possible answer,

coming up with and conducting a procedure

to find possible answers to the question,

we finished the day with creative play: challenging advisee groups

to create with marshmallows, spaghetti, and imagination,

Science Day was of awe, of revelation, and of joy.

by Henry H. Walker

March 17, ‘23