SPOKANE (WA) SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
June 17, 1999
GIRLS HONE SCIENCE SKILLS
MIXING IN FUN MCMOMENTS `IT'S COOL,' SAYS 12-YEAR-OLD OF WORKSHOP'S HANDS-ON LAB EMPHASIS
By Jeanette White
Staff writer
The middle school girls took a whiff of their scientific concoction Thursday and gagged. It smelled, they said, like hamburgers and Sprite.
That's because moments earlier the chunky liquid actually was a hamburger and Sprite, and also an order of french fries.
But then Washington State University scientist Sylvia Oliver had dumped the McDonald's Happy Meal into a blender and asked the 11 girls in her science camp a key question. ``Grind?'' she asked, scanning the various blender speeds. ``I think grind.''
Whirrrrrrr.
``Post-Happy Meal!'' Oliver announced, inviting the girls up for samples.
The girls spent the afternoon analyzing the protein, sugar and starch content of what they endearingly called McMush.
``It's cool,'' said 12-year-old Rusanne Hill, who searched for starch by squeezing a drop of iodine into the mixture and waiting for it to turn blue.
Hill and her stepsister, 13-year-old Stephanie Nyman, were in Day Two of WSU's three-day summer science camp just for girls. The camp, in its second year, is designed to expose kids to science careers and to give girls more hands-on lab experience.
``I feel very strongly about having just girls,'' Oliver said. ``Our experience is that the boys are more aggressive and tend to take over the lab. The girls tend to just observe.''
At the South Hill camp, Oliver said, ``We designed the labs so they work in teams and everyone has to do something.''
Girls also work with top-quality science equipment, Oliver said. ``There are some girls who'd never in their lifetime be able to do that. This isn't dumbed-down high school research.''
Some camp tuitions are paid with scholarships, but most girls pay $75 each for the three-day camp. At another WSU summer camp July 20-22, high school girls will extract DNA from caribou hair.
The middle school girls will work with DNA samples today. The camp's final experiment will let the girls analyze parts of an imaginary Martian mummy: stomach contents, DNA and packing pellets posing as fecal matter.
They'll also listen to members of a local astronomy society talk about career options in astronomy.
Hill and Nyman, both students at Salk Middle School, said working with DNA was their favorite part of camp so far. Hill said she expects all the science will help in her future career as a veterinarian - a dream since second grade.
Nyman learned one important lesson already: Never stick your finger in the DNA. ``It was really slimy.''