Campers at Salisbury Academy learned lessons of science through hands-on experiments during the schools’ new Mad Scientist camp.
Salisbury Academy offers a variety of camps with different themes and experiences. This summer the school added several camps, including the Mad Scientist camp.
This camp, for rising first- through fourth-grade students, focused on learning the scientific method through hands-on experiments. Campers participated in experiments through which they explored scientific concepts such as liquid density, Newtonian theory, sound waves, biology, acids and bases and buoyancy. One of the key focal points of camp was repurposing materials to use for scientific inquiry. Campers used empty tin cans to construct walkie-talkies, used household materials to test pH, created fingerprint powder from potato chips, and ran a clock battery on the power of a potato. In addition to the scientific concepts they learned how to keep track of their experiments. Each student kept his or her own lab notebook in which they recorded the problem, their hypothesis, any observations and the conclusion. Through this, the students were accountable for their experiments and could think critically about the purposes behind them.