Dozens of children stopped by the Sanford Lab table at the Harrisburg Horizon Elementary School STEM Festival.
“What’s a neutrino?”
The question was asked dozens of times by dozens of children (and adults) as they streamed by the Sanford Lab booth at the Harrisburg Horizon Elementary School STEM Festival.
I explained that neutrinos are particles that travel through the universe at nearly the speed of light without touching anything and they could help us understand some pretty important questions about the universe. They nodded dutifully.
“And trillions of them just shot right through you!” I added.
“Whoa!” A 10-year-old girl said, her eyes widening. “I don’t feel anything.”
The children’s attention quickly turned to the makeshift particle accelerator, a plastic tube we use to demonstrate how neutrinos will travel from Fermilab near Chicago, Illinois, more than 800 miles through the earth to the Sanford Lab in Lead, South Dakota.
“What’s that?” Several asked in awe, their fingers itching to pick up the copper-colored BBs standing in for the elusive neutrino.
“Those,” I responded, “are neutrinos.”
“No, they’re not,” said one little boy. “They’re BBs. I have a BB gun and that’s what I use.”
“But we’re going to pretend they are neutrinos, OK?”
He looked at me a bit dubiously, then grabbed a handful and shot them through the plastic tube toward the ping-pong argon balls posing as atoms into the cardboard box detector.
When he finished, he asked if he could keep the few "neutrinos" he had left over. I smiled and held out my hand. He reluctantly handed them over then rushed to another booth nearby.
In all, more than 400 people—250 of whom were elementary-aged children—attended the school’s first-ever STEM Festival.
“We are really impressed with the response to this event,” said Christine Pyatt, a member of Harrisburg’s Parent Teacher Organization, which organized the event.
“We did this because we want kids to be able to picture themselves as scientists,” she continued. “Part of that goal is to expose them to scientists and others who work in areas students might not automatically think about. Also, we want them to have fun while exploring those possibilities.”
Two dozen organizations participated in the event, using hands-on activities to engage visitors to the festival.
“We couldn’t have done it without the organizations and individuals who take the time to come to these types of events,” Pyatt said. “The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.”