Outreach: Schniepp Lab Hosts Fieldtrip for Local Homeschooled Students
| September 21, 2022 — By Ben Skopic |
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As part of our outreach initiatives, we are trying to expose more people to our research who wouldn't ordinarily know what research is going on in the community. One local group that didn't know about our research, or that research on spider silk or diatoms was even possible was the local Williamsburg Classical Conversations homeschooling group. We had 30 students ranging from kindergarten to sixth graders with 19 of their parents: 49 people! We had all hands on deck to give them the best possible experience. We were very fortunate to work with Professor James Kaste who enabled us to host the fieldtrip at the W&M Keck lab. The Keck lab is W&M's environmental field lab located on the shore of Lake Matoaka. With the Keck lab as the venue, we were able to provide an outdoor, hands-on experience for all of the students!
To make sure all the students got the most out of the fieldtrip, we split the students into three groups that rotated through three fun stations. The station that Ben ran started with a classroom demonstration teaching what materials science is and why materials scientists are interested in spider silk and diatoms. Ben then took the students outside to the Keck lab dock and helped the students collect plankton, algae, diatoms, and other creatures that live in Lake Matoaka as seen in the first picture. To collect the marine life, we used a plankton net which is a fine mesh shaped like a wind sock that we tossed into the water and allowed the water to be strained out, leaving highly concentrated samples of the life! The kids each got their own sample so that they could look at them under the microscope in a later station.
The next station was inside, led by Dinidu and Avishi, where the kids got to look at the marine life they had just caught straight from the lake. We helped them pipette a droplet of their lake water onto a glass slide then placing a cover slip on top to make their sample for the microscopes. We used transmission light microscopes to view these samples. The kids all saw the microscopic creatures that live throughout every body of water but are impossible to see with the naked eye. In many cases, this was the first time these young homeschooled students had gotten to use a microscope!
The third and final station seen in the picture on the right was led by Jake and Aidan. This station was outside again where they got to look at larger objects using reflection stereo microscopes. Here, the students looked at prepared samples of the creatures we work with like Bombyx mori (silkworms), Trichonephila clavipes (Golden Orb Weaver spiders), Loxosceles laeta (Chilean Recluse spiders), ditymo, and many more! We also encouraged the kids to get adventurous and find things around the forest to look at under the microscopes. Some cool things they found were bird feathers, quartz rocks, acorns, and colorful leaves! It was exciting to see the kids react to being able to see the complex microstructures of these common objects that are only visible under magnification!
Over the two hours that we got to spend with the kids and parents, we were astounded by how smart and curious these young scientists were! Talking with the fieldtrip coordinator for the group, we hope to do another similar field trip for their high school students in the spring!
