My daughter had her seventh birthday party this last Saturday. A few parents were nice to stay and help. The party was a mad science party – where my wife, a geo-chemist, does really cool science demonstrations – puking pumpkin, marshmallows in a vacuum, floating bubbles on carbon dioxide, goldenrod drawings, egg in a bottle, etc. Oh, and the ever popular soda volcano… (Having a horde of loud 6-7 years olds screaming “volcano, volcano” in the front yard did cause several neighbors to come out and see what the commotion was.) During the experiments I noticed something interesting.

When the pumpkin puked, the egg was sucked into the bottle, the marshmallows grew, the bubbles floated on nothing, many of the kids’ reactions were ‘this is cool’, and then a burst of questions on how did that happen or why.

The adults’ reactions were somewhat sedate. They thought it was cool, but more the attitude of seen it, done it. Not one of them asked how did that happen or why did it happen. There was no discussion. I even asked if they knew what happened or how, or why, and they just shrugged their shoulders. I could tell they were curious – and maybe they didn’t ask because the kids were all asking and my wife already had established that she would tell everyone how it happened after she asked the kids questions as to why they thought something happened. It was easy to be patient when you knew the answer was coming, or to not think when you know the answer will be available if you wait. For the kids, they were too excited to wait, so they had to ask.

At school on Monday, many of the parents who didn’t stay at the party came up to me to tell me how cool the kids thought the party was. They heard in-depth descriptions of the different experiments and that the party was all their kids talked about the whole weekend.

I recognize as adults that when we see something happen and, if it is not in our field of interest, we may think it is cool, but we are quick to focus on other things. Even if we are curious, we may not ask questions because we don’t want to wait for the explanation or be embarrassed for not knowing how it happened. Even if no explanation is given, we don’t ask the questions we need to. It is the kids who have the wonderment and ask the questions. It is us, as instructors, who must bring the kid out in our students so they too will continue to do the same.

Mark Viquesney