Science Festival Opens Fifth-Graders' Eyes to Wondrous Possibilities

About 1,500 fifth-grade students from 11 school districts in Lycoming and surrounding counties attended Thursday's Science Festival at Penn College. Co-hosted by College Transitions and the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce, the event offered youngsters a peek into math- and science-related career opportunities at a variety of campus locations throughout the day. Vendor exhibits continued for the public during the evening hours, filling the Field House with inquisitive elementary and middle school students and their families.

– Photos by Zachery T. Kane, student photographer

Culinary students preview processes that will be showcased at April's USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., including "spherification" – the process of turning a liquid into caviar-like balls.

Hands hit the air when fifth-graders are asked, "Who wants chocolate?"

"Quasi," part of the "Rockin' Robots" exhibit from the Carnegie Science Center, introduces himself ...

... and helps pupils learn about binary code.

Carnegie's Justin Meinhert lets the Bardo Gym crowd tell a surrogate robot (the youngster at left) how to place a lung on his classmate.

The Penn College student chapter of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers displays condensor coils in the Field House.

Other exhibits range from testing reflexes ...

... to a forester's safe chain-saw operation ...

... to the physics of pendulums.