Princeton Molecular Biology Outreach Program

March 19, 2008
A cool spring day greeted 1000 area middle school students and teachers as they arrived for the Princeton Science and Engineering Expo.  In the Carl Icahn Atrium they spread out and examined zebrafish embryo mutants and saw firsthand an embryo’s beating heart. Tiny trained C. elegans worms amazed the student visitors. They then cultured V. harveyi to observe bacterial communication.  The cultures grow up in a few days and start glowing in the dark..  Neurobiology and Psychology wowed the students with sheep’s brain dissections and the chance to tickle a cockroach leg.  The captivating video, The Inner Life of a Cell, drew crowds of students.  Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association shared information on how to detect stream water quality.  Professor Bart Hoebel, Psychology, showed how streams are polluted with runoff from cities and farms.  Ecology and Evolutionary Biology shared studies on fish schooling.  Students were amazed with the elephant skull and teeth display.  The Rutgers Protein Data Bank explored protein structure with toothpick and mini-marshmallow virus models. Then the students were off to rotate through the three other Expo sites featuring physics, chemistry, engineering and materials science.

Some student comments we received:

“I used to think that science was boring and there could never be anything fun about it, but his new experience has changed my entire perspective on science.  I now realize that many labs in science are extremely cool.”

“I always used to look at science as lab coats and accents but now I look at science in a different way than I did before, and hope that I get a chance to view those amazing acts of experimentation again the fire related experiments left me in pure awe!”

“This science expo was truly as first-class experience; it actually made science seem like something I would like to do when I grow up.  Thanks for the opportunity to see science in a different and unorthodox way that isn’t what is typically in the classroom.”