The Newsletter for Science in Motion at Susquehanna University

Volume III Issue 2 April 2004

We are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Susquehanna University now has one van running. We hired Mrs. Madge Schworer who will be profiled below. Madge is a biologist by training but she has been willing to learn the most favorite chemistry equipment and exercises. We are still looking for a person with a strong chemistry background to be our other mobile educator.

Politics Politics

Once again we were not in Governor Rendell’s budget for fiscal year 2004-2005. We have the full support of our area representatives who have promised to work on having The Pennsylvania Basic/Higher Education Science and Technology Partnerships put back into the budget as a line item appropriation.

There has been legislation to have us become a permanent part of the State Grant Program. This legislation has been titled, The Science and Technology Partnership Act. A form of that bill unanimously passed in the House, HB 1618, in November. That bill is stuck in the Senate Education Committee. A senate administrative assistant said it would stay there because some people feel it is dictating curriculum to the schools. Not true. The companion Senate Bill SB 83 has been stuck in the Senate appropriations since last fall. We need to get the Senate to move on at least one of these bills.

What can you do? Write or e-mail your area legislators. After having spoken with several of our political pundits and their administrative assistants, I have a few suggestions to ensure the best possible voice for Science in Motion. All letters, whether hard copied or e-mailed, should be original. If you are starting from a boilerplate letter, that is great but is should not look like a form letter. All letters should have the home address of the sender on the letter. The letters should be sent to the legislators for the constituent not the legislators associated with the school district. Unless your students are eligible voters, student letters are really not appreciated. Letters should also be directed to Secretary of Education, Vicki Phillips and Governor Rendell.

We Survived the Budget Crisis Dinner – Nicely Attended

We had a good turn out for celebratory get back on track dinner. Representatives Merle Phillips and Russ Fairchild were kind enough to take time out of their busy schedules to join us for dinner. Other VIP’s from Susquehanna University included President Jay Lemons and newly appointed Vice President Linda McMillin. Many of the teachers in attendance were able to reconnect with their colleagues from other districts. We had a small brain storming session and came up with some ideas for new equipment, new experiments and summer workshop topics. All together we had thirty-two enthusiastic supports of Science in Motion in attendance. Not bad for a weeknight in mid February. There are plans to bring back the Mole Day Dinner in October if we are sure of our funding for the next fiscal year.

Madge Schworer - Biology Mobile Educator

Science in Motion has been very fortunate to find Mrs. Madge Schworer. Madge has a BS from Juniata College and an MS from Penn State. Madge had been working in the Lewisburg School District as a substitute teacher and special education teacher’s aide for the last five years. We are pleased that she decided to make a career change and come work with us at Science in Motion. Madge already has many of the remaining school days booked, but she still has some spots left. Since she is on a pretty steep learning curve at the moment. We hope that those of you with a lot of Science in Motion experience will be willing to mentor through the host of new experiments and techniques that she is learning daily. For those of you who are new to the program, please be patient and you can learn together. Madge and the SIM Van should be available through the first week in June.

Madge Schworer Says…

My first month at Science in Motion has been quite a learning experience! I have been busy visiting schools and simply learning the experiments and equipment available in our program. The enthusiasm of teachers and students for the services offered by Science in Motion is contagious and the assistance they have given me with my first visits with labs is greatly appreciated!

My first stop as mobile educator was Milton High School with Debbie Kurtz’s biology classes and Kathy Bower’s AP Biology class. Our Crime Scene became famous with the newspaper coverage provided by the Daily Item. We worked through fingerprint and hair analysis, blood typing, and the electrophoresis technology associated with DNA fingerprinting to pinpoint our culprit in the crime. Special thanks goes to those students and teachers for help and patience!

The next week brought me to Jessica Feerrar’s Advanced Biology class at Lewisburg High School to work through the Transpiration Lab and my first endeavor with the laptop computers and Vernier software. Fortunately, many of the students are pros at this resource and were a great help. I learned a lot and look forward to doing this experiment again in April at Milton. The Lewisburg Honor Biology classes used the computers and temperature probes to investigate the Energy Content of Foods. After warning our class neighbors that the strange smells of burning were OK, the students were quite successful in their analysis of a variety of foods. We can now understand why the weight watchers among us choose the baked tortilla chips over those tasty but high cal Fritos!

A special thanks to Deb Slattery and Tracy Hepner for their invitation to come to their AP and college prep chemistry classes at Danville High School to learn the acid-base titration lab and the gas law labs. The occasional drop in of our SIM equipment manager, Mike McDevitt, helped me learn some troubleshooting tricks for our computers and printers. Thanks Mike, Deb, and Tracy! Another thank you goes to Bo Meyer at Williamsport High School for the opportunity to work through the Bacterial Transformation experiment with his AP Biology students. This is a great lab to introduce students to sterile technique and to the concepts of genetic engineering that they read about so often in the media.

Colleen Ruths at Shikellamy High School pioneered the use of our new pressure plate in her Chemistry classes. Without a written protocol, but armed with a student with toe shoes, her classes investigated the distribution of pressure and forces on the foot. Developing labs for these new pressure plates will be a goal of our summer workshop in June. Thanks Colleen for giving this new technology a first try.

I finished up the month as I started with Crime Scene, this time at Lewisburg High School, with Jessica Feerrar’s Advanced Biology class. We discovered that practice does make perfect, especially in using the micropipettes and loading those DNA samples onto the agarose gels. I look forward to seeing the results of our electrophoresis and the resolution of our investigation.

The end of the school year is approaching and many teachers have already booked labs for April and May. Days are available the end of April, the first week in May and the first week in June. Contact me at the SIM office at 372-4780 or by email schworer@susqu.edu to reserve a lab day for your classes.

Experiment of the Month
Heart Rate and EKG Labs

Are your students interested in fitness levels and cardiovascular health? Using the laptop computers and the Vernier Exercise Heart Rate Monitor, students can determine the effect of body position and exercise on heart rates and then use this information to calculate a fitness level. Adding the EKG Sensor will allow students to graph their heart’s electrical activity, determine the time interval between EKG events, and determine their heart rate based on the EKG recording. Realizing that the graphs generated are coming from each student’s own heart puts the information on a personal level.

Amusement Park Physics - Knoebel’s here we come, or LOOK OUT!

We have purchased some new physics probes and equipment. A small group of teachers will be piloting these experiments at Knoebel's Amusement Park late in May. If they are successful, we will offer a Knoebel’s Physics Day as part of the summer workshop. The plan is to have amusement park physics available for use in your classrooms by next spring since Knoebel's closes the week after Labor Day.

Summer Workshop is Being Planned

The dates have been set for the summer workshop. We are scheduling the workshop for June 14-18, 2004. This will be 5 full days and since Susquehanna University is now an Act 48 provider, we should be able to file those credits for you through our continuing education office. As in other years, there will be a stipend provided for teachers who have not yet done the weeklong workshop. Returning teachers are always welcome and offered a stipend if there is money available. We are trying a new approach this year. Deb Slattery and Tracy Hepner, both Danville Science teachers, will be part of our workshop staff this year as lead teachers. Mike McDevitt will also be there in his new role as equipment manager. I would like to run three smaller groups this year: biology, chemistry and physics (Yes, I said physics). We will be working on some of the most popular SIM labs, as well as, developing new labs for the equipment we have. We did buy two of the pressure plates last year and need to develop labs for those. We have also purchased some new probes for the Logger Pros and a lot of equipment for physics. Please see the workshop flyer attached to this newsletter to sign up.

New Equipment at Science in Motion

The following new equipment is available at Science in Motion:

§ 4 vertical electrophoreses units with acrylic gels and power supply

§ Boreal Digital Video/Camera Microscopes - these microscopes provide a video display on our Dell laptops that can be copied, projected or printed as still photographs.

§ Spec 20 (Genesys) Direct Hookup to our Dell Laptops - we have purchased the software/hardware necessary to display, create, then print visible spectra or Beer’s Law Calibration Curves from our Genesys spectrographs. We have 8 Genesys UV/ Visible Spectrographs.

§ TI - 83 graphing calculators - we have purchased 6 TI-83 calculators that can be used as stand alones or connected to our Vernier lab pros to collect, display, and manipulate data.

§ For Physical Science Classes we have purchased Science Kit Crazy Coasters (marble simulation) -1 classroom kit, includes 4 coasters (foam pipe insulation)

§ Meltemps - We have available 8 meltemps with appropriate experimental activities to demonstrate procedures for melting point determinations and their importance in quality control and sample purity testing.

§ One touch Ultra Blood Glucose Monitors - we have available 8 blood glucose monitors available for use in your classroom.

§ 10 Palm Pilots with appropriate software/hardware to connect to our Vernier logger pro- lab interfaces. They work extremely well with our water analysis probes making them very portable.

Chemistry Mobile Educator Position – Still Open

The Chemistry Mobile Science Teacher position remains open. Job details may be found on the Susquehanna University Web site at www.susqu.edu.

Save a Tree

If you wish to receive this newsletter in electronic format, please send us your e-mail address at sciencemotion@susqu.edu or phone us at 372-4779.

Jan Reichard-Brown Ph.D.
Director, Science in Motion
570-372-4778 or reichardbrown@susqu.edu