Tried and Tested: Curiosity Lab

I don't have very pleasant memories of science class. It was alright in lower and middle school, but by the time I hit high school, most physics theories were sailing right over my head. Meanwhile, in chemistry class, equations and formulas would undergo destructive reactions upon colliding with my brain cells. Suffice it to say, I don't think I surprised anyone when I opted to study commerce in my final years at school.
That feeling of grim foreboding is one I've carried well into adulthood. So when I came across a Facebook page for Curiosity Lab, a "child enrichment programme" teaching kids about gravity and chemical reactions and centrifugal tricks through super-interactive science sessions, my own curiosity was piqued. Sure, I was well over the age limit prescribed, but Moheb Nabeel - a former engineer at Rolls-Royce and self-professed geek who devised this outfit - assured me his mission to help kids fall in love with science again could accommodate a curious cat (read: me) too.

Learning with slime
Out at the Masterminds Nursery in Umm Suqeim, the kids attending the weekday afternoon session (all sessions take place after school) are fidgety with anticipation and so am I. This term, they're going to study magnets. "Mo" - as he's known, even to the kids - looks like a pretty cool scientist himself, as he sits at the head of a table covered with plastic, his blue lab coat emblazoned with the Curiosity Lab logo. A funky 'galaxy' tie completes the look.
We begin with a couple of demonstrations on the properties of magnets and how they attract metals. "Let's make magnetic slime!" says Mo, to loud cheers. Each kid is given a little bowl in which he helps them mix slime juice with a little borax (a type of salt used in various household cleaning and laundry products) and generous helpings of iron powder. "It looks like pepper!" declares one boisterous six-year-old. "Yes, it does," smiles Mo, patiently. "But you're not gonna want to eat this kind!" When everyone is done kneading their slime, Mo hovers a stack of little rare-earth magnets over a bowl and the white and grey speckled gloop suddenly begins to rise. The kids squeal - and I don't blame them. The slime looks alive, inching its way up the magnet pile and 'eating' it whole! "It's the iron powder in the slime that the magnet is attracted to," explains Mo.

Solid fun with liquid nitrogen
Next up is a levitation trick. As Mo talks about how cooled superconductors can levitate and how they'll be using liquid nitrogen to cool theirs to -196°C, I imagine there were enough words in those sentences to make any eight-year-old scratch his/her head. "Some of the theories are pretty advanced for their age," Mo agrees. "But breaking them down into smaller, exciting topics and using interactive experiments help the concepts stay with the kids."
He demonstrates the cryogenic qualities of liquid nitrogen by dipping a long-stemmed rose into a canister of the colourless liquid. Everyone counts down raucously from 10 before Mo pulls the rose back out. "Stand back a bit," he calls. As the kids hold their breath, Mo cracks the frozen flower down onto the table - and it smashes into scores of little red pieces to excited yells and whoops from his young audience.
The 'coolness' of liquid nitrogen established, it's time to test the theory of magnetic levitation. Removing a superconductor immersed in liquid nitrogen, Mo sets it on top of a magnetic pad. The superconductor fizzes but, hey presto, it floats! A few seconds later, it drops onto the pad and lies still. "Once it warms up and goes above its superconducting temperature, it loses the ability to levitate," Mo explains, as he obliges requests for an encore. "But if you grow up and discover material that can do this at higher temperatures, you could change the world!"
For some closing fun, the kids get up on little chairs as Mo raises a canister full of liquid nitrogen. "Ready for a liquid nitrogen explosion?" he teases. On the count of three, he dumps the lot onto the floor as the kids jump down at the same time. I'm standing a little away but the clear liquid whooshes past my boots. and then is gone, leaving only a lot of white smoke behind. I examine my shoes. Nothing. It was like it hadn't even happened - and yet I know it had hit me too. "Liquid nitrogen is so cold that the minute it touches anything hotter, it changes immediately into gas," says Mo. [Aha!] "Even a room temperature floor is too hot for it, so it forms drops and shoots across the room before evaporating. The white smoke is just water vapour."
As the class wraps up, I'm a little sad - not because it's time to leave, but because the last one hour was unlike any science class I'd ever attended. "Kids are, by nature, full of questions," says Mo. "And constantly asking questions is what makes great scientists. Unfortunately, as they grow up, they tend to get bogged down by textbook theories and start resenting the subject, instead of enjoying it. Curiosity Lab is a passion project; I'm just trying to get kids to see real science - and, hopefully, keep their love for it too."
karen@khaleejtimes.com