News - Local News

POSTED: Tuesday, Sep. 30, 2008

Bellingham museum brings electricity lessons to students

BELLINGHAM - "Can you imagine life without electricity?" Dr. Zap, from the American Museum of Radio and Electricity, asked a group of Alderwood Elementary School students.

"All the lights would be off," he said. "It would be like camping every day."

Dr. Zap, and several others from the downtown Bellingham museum, taught nearly 100 Alderwood students about electricity during an after-school program Monday afternoon, Sept. 29.

This school year, the museum has partnered with Alderwood to provide science education on early-release days, giving students something to do while their parents are still at work. Last year, the school offered an arts program on a couple of early-release days.

"We were asked by the PTAs, and I recognized that teachers need this time to collaborate and get extra professional development for learning improvement," said Anne Bargetz, the new education director for the museum. "And the community needs this because many parents work and need to take half a day off on these days."

Throughout the year, the program will be funded by the school's PTA and by two Alcoa grants, one for the museum to do outreach work and one for volunteers from the Alcoa Women's network. The museum will probably start offering the program at Northern Heights Elementary later this year.

An assembly featuring "mad scientist" Dr. Zap and a "time machine" started the afternoon's activities, with lessons about Benjamin Franklin, the Tesla coil and electromagnetism.

The crowd favorite was an experiment called the "human power line." During the experiment, students stood in a line holding hands, with a student holding a tubular fluorescent light bulb. At the other end was Dr. Zap with another fluorescent bulb and the Tesla coil. When Dr. Zap touched the bulb to the spark from the coil, electricity traveled through the students and lit the bulb at the end of the line.

"I could feel it inside of me," said 8-year-old Mikey Vandenhaak. "It felt weird, like shocking me in a tingling way."

Fifth-grade student Amber Joslyn liked the lesson that featured Benjamin Franklin's work with charges and transporting electricity in a bottle, otherwise known as a Leyden jar.

"I liked when he put electricity into a bottle," said Joslyn, 10. "I didn't know you could do that."

At the end of the afternoon, students got a chance to test the experiments themselves, with five stations featuring magnetism, static electricity, electronic games, the Tesla coil, and a Theremin, which is an electronic musical instrument that plays music using electromagnetic fields, rather than touch.

The lessons at each school will change for each early-release day, so students can attend all of them without repeating experiments, Bargetz said.

"I want the kids to have fun," she said. "I'm really glad to be able to do this because I know, as a former teacher, the need for these days and, as a parent, how hard it can be to have a half day. So I hope it's going to be a win-win situation for everybody."