"Mad Scientists" explore concoctions in the classroom

By PAMELA GRANT
Cove Leader-Press

Copperas Cove High School students in the special education program had a blast, celebrating Halloween with exploding toothpaste, creating toilet paper mummies, and more last Friday.

The experiments were part of the high school’s annual Mad Scientist Day for SpEd students. All day, the students performed or participated in a variety of fun experiments such as creating a concoction to change the color of their lemonade or using water on dry erase drawings to make them “fly”.

Students “oohed” and “awed” as their instructor caused a toothpaste mixture to rapidly “explode” out of it’s container, even creating color patterns while doing so.

“Our kids are still developmentally young enough where they want to celebrate Halloween, but it’s not socially acceptable for our kids to do the Halloween party type thing and they aren’t ready for a high school kinda party. So we do this Mad Scientist Day as a way of meeting in the middle of the road for them,” said teacher Tina Carter in between experiments. “They still get to celebrate and dress up and have all the fun and excitement of Halloween…and they learn a ton!”

The teachers use the experiments to give the students a hands-on way to experience the science principles that they are already learning. The students put what they’ve learned into action and are able to discuss what is happening, how it’s happening, and why it’s happening.

“They learn a ton and they really look forward to it. They talk about it for weeks,” said Carter. “Their parents get more excited for it than they do.”

In the earlier years the students only performed one or two experiments on Mad Scientist Day, but now they have a full day of activities.

Every year, they try to do a few experiments that the older students have already done so that they can get excited about something that they already know about and some even help out with the experiment. They also like to have some new experiments to give everyone a surprise and to make each year new and exciting. She said that this year, the flying fish experiment where they made their drawings fly was the favorite of most of the students. A favorite over the years is the Mentos and Coke experiment.

One of the experiments lead by SpEd teacher Jamie Rosario-Cruz was teaching students about carbon dioxide. Their experiment was putting baking soda and vinegar in a bag. When the two mix together, it causes the bag to expand until it explodes.

“It’s about hands-on learning. They can physically see it and they can understand it better,” said Rosario-Cruz. “It’s just lots of fun.”