Students Make Science Fun at Geneva Middle School South

When environmentalist Geoff Beauchamp lifted Bob out his box and displayed him to the seventh-graders on the west gym bleachers at Geneva Middle School South, many students—and even a few teachers—recoiled in fear.

Not. P.E. teacher Susan Logston. After Beauchamp laid Bob out on a table, Logston eagerly came forward to pet the 10-foot-long albino Burmese python. “I had a snake when I was a little girl,” she recalled. “I’ve always loved them. They’re amazing because they’re essentially one long muscle.”

Bob and his handlers were only one of many guests who made presentations Thursday during the school’s Science Enrichment Day. Sixth-graders saw a live great horned owl, fossils, minerals and a bicycle built to generate electricity. Seventh-graders sampled fresh-cooked squid and mussels, learned about trapping and keeping bees, heard how to keep their bones healthy and petted a chinchilla, a hedgehog, a therapy dog named Holly—and Bob. Eighth-graders heard a presentation on AIDS awareness, then experienced the lighter side of physics and chemistry.

Some presentations definitely had a “cool” factor.

“That was awesome!” one eighth-grader exclaimed after classmate Megan Fitz created a huge blob of bubbly gases in the Science Alliance chemistry demonstration.

Sixth-graders Paola Mendez and Kylee Hamilton were thrilled by the arm-sized Edmontosaurus foot bone paleontologist Rob Sula displayed in the White team center. “It’s so big, and it’s so old,” Mendez observed. “It’s amazing that we can still find things from that long ago,” Hamilton added.

Others offered more of a “yuck” factor, at least for some students. Seventh-grader Kelsey O’Berry, who had just worn a live Mexican king snake around her neck in the animal presentation, drew the line at eating a freshly-cooked mussel.

“Eww! It looks like a brain,” she cried, holding the mollusk at arm’s length. Other students shuddered as North Aurora resident Harry Patterson described trapping swarms of bees in the Fox Valley, or cringed at the news that great horned owls sometimes eat their own chicks.

All the presenters encouraged students to go out and experience their own scientific adventures. “Mazon Creek is the only place in the world where you can find fossilized soft-fleshed animals, and it’s right here in northern Illinois,” Sula pointed out. “Go fossil hunting and find the next amazing thing!”