In a primary school deep in Stokes Valley, a plastic bottle is being launched over a classroom at high speed, accompanied by a dramatic plume of white and the gleeful screams of 30 children. Its trajectory can be traced back to a lone individual standing in the middle of a field, drenched in water.

I’ve just finished off a learning session on physics, using liquid nitrogen and a bottle of water to demonstrate the three laws of motion.

It’s the Wellington Faculty of Science’s outreach programme in action. Over the past three years, I’ve been travelling around the Wellington region with the goal of boosting science achievement in schools and encouraging students to pursue science as a career. I’ve lit my hand on fire, been sprayed with cornflour, and handled an actual elephant tooth, all in the name of science. It’s taken me from the Kapiti Coast to the far reaches of the Wairarapa and everywhere in between.

The philosophy is simple—a science undergraduate begins their path as a new entrant. Children are innate scientists, developing and testing hypotheses about the natural world as they tear around the playground. Despite this, science achievement in our schools is on the decline.

There isn’t one specific cause. It’s the result of many challenges facing teachers trying to deliver science lessons. One of these challenges is the sheer scope of science. If a teacher doesn’t already have some familiarity with it, how do they even know where to begin?

That’s where the Wellington Faculty of Science’s outreach programme comes in. Our sessions use hands-on activities and dramatic demonstrations to introduce students and teachers alike to fundamental scientific concepts that they can use as a foundation for learning. Because who better to support science education in schools than staff in the actual Faculty of Science?

The work is immensely rewarding. There’s nothing quite like the sounds of wonder you get from a class witnessing a flask of water change colour before their eyes or the sounds of disgust when you zoom right in on a bacterial colony. And the questions you get are unlike anything you’ll hear in a lecture theatre. A lot of the time, it’s along the lines of “What would happen if you ate this?”—to which the answer is generally, “You’ll die”—but I’ve been asked some absolutely brilliant questions as well, such as whether a disposable glove is dirtier on the inside or the outside.

We’ve delivered programmes to more than 15,000 students, and there are some individuals who really stick in my mind. Like the 11-year-old girl who figured out the principles of electrical induction after 10 minutes of playing with a copper pipe and a magnet. Or the eight-year-old boy with the chemistry lab in his bedroom who told me the story of how “one time, I was mixing some chemicals together and then this gas started coming out of the flask. I couldn’t sleep in my room for a week!” It turns out his parents had to spend that week effectively decontaminating his room.

In every School across the Faculty of Science, there are motivated people going above and beyond to create opportunities for students to get involved in science. Sometimes what starts off as a simple inquiry from a teacher can end up as a full-day experience for their class on par with what we offer our first-year students.

Sometimes all it takes is a single story or ‘aha’ moment to send a student down a completely different path. One young woman came down from Taranaki to the University on a field trip, planning to join the Navy next year, and left us with the goal of becoming the first in her family to go to university. It’s moments like these that make all the organising worth it.

For more information contact the Wellington Faculty of Science on Science-Faculty@vuw.ac.nz