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.''