“Let’s do this thing!” an elementary-age boy shouted. He thumped his balled fists on the table, crushing the Alka-Seltzer tablets in front of him. Two of his friends huddled around him and chanted, “Crush! Crush! Crush!” and then, “Vinegar! Vinegar Vinegar!” as they added the tablet to a small container.
In another part of the room, Raquel Lopez excitedly took photographs of her son. Lopez said the exploding balloons were her favorite part of the day.
“But don’t tell him that, because I have to repeat, ‘Just in the lab,’” Lopez said.
She took a picture of the cream-colored, liquid slime in her son’s hands, which he held up proudly.
“And I think this is his favorite part!” Lopez said.
Such are the scenes of Open Lab Day, a day when elementary, middle, and high school students come to BYU and experience the excitement of chemistry.
BYU’s student chapter of the American Chemical Society, or Y-Chem, puts on the event every year in conjunction with National Lab Day. Y-Chem volunteers lead students through lab tours and college-level experiments, exposing many of the students to chemistry for the first time.
Y-Chem members specifically tailor each experiment to the age group of the audience. Elementary students learned about different elements using flame tests and discovered rates of reaction by crushing Alka-Seltzer tablets and adding them to water and vinegar, among other experiments.
Junior high and high school students toured facilities and labs, created batteries using air and aluminum, and conducted qualitative analysis.
“It’s something that I wish I had done in high school,” said Erika Wheir, Y-Chem member and Open Lab Day volunteer. “I didn’t have the nicest labs [in high school] . . . and so being able to participate in that and letting other people have the opportunity I didn’t have makes me really happy.”
Ben Rencher, another member of Y-Chem, worked primarily with the high school students, leading them through one experiment where students created a compound that smelled like bananas. Rencher said one of his favorite parts was seeing the students’ faces light up as they smelled their experiment and said, “Hey, it really smells like bananas!”
“Open Lab Day is all about inspiring students, giving them an idea of what college chemistry classes might be like. This is really just a glimpse of what you could possibly do professionally,” Rencher said.
When the students were finished with the tours and experiments, they all gathered in one classroom to witness a “Magic Show.” There, BYU biochemistry professor David J. Michaelis stunned students with dry liquid, cryogenized graham crackers, and exploding balloons.
“I normally like to start off with a bang,” Michaelis said.
Alex Farnsworth, Y-Chem President and head of Open Lab Day, emphasized the importance of a program like Open Lab Day.
“The interactions most people have until you are a sophomore or junior in college is entirely textbook-based, especially with chemistry,” Farnsworth said. “The truth of the matter is science has always been experimental. Science has always been about, ‘What can we discover through testing the limits of our knowledge?’ That testing comes from getting in the lab, getting your hands a little dirty, and getting a little sticky.”