Lincoln Schools Science Circus gets virtual

Lincoln's junior high and high school students participate in a Science Circus every two years, and this year, community members can see all the Science Circus projects from the comfort of their homes.

Science Circus projects allow students to pick a science law to demonstrate in a fun and engaging way, said Lincoln science teacher Nancy Schwalm.

"Normally, we would host it in the gym. It would be like a circus, and the kids are demonstrating some sort of law or phenomenon," said Schwalm. She added that students might choose to demonstrate gravity by juggling or demonstrate chemical reactions by creating elephant toothpaste.

Due to COVID restrictions, the demonstrations couldn't be hosted in the gym this year. Instead, students, individually or in teams, developed a demonstration and created a video of the project that can be viewed on the Lincoln Schools website. Community members are encouraged to watch all the student videos and vote for first, second, and third place in three categories: best demonstration/explanation of a scientific law/phenomenon, funniest/most entertaining, and most creative/original presentation/idea. There are a 24 videos, all three minutes or shorter, and the last day for voting is Valentine's Day.

The added video aspect was a good learning experience, said Schwalm. Students were able to use the free technology available on their school laptops to film the projects in the classroom, as well as edit the videos.

"Thank goodness Mrs. Bullis was awesome about helping. Some of the kids have taken Mrs. Bullis' class, like her broadcasting class or her tech class. Those kids sailed right through, no big deal," said Schwalm, adding that students who were especially techy or had already taken tech classes helped out to make the videos.

Schwalm pushes the students to find a project that is fun and that speaks to their interests. To prepare for the Science Circus, the students watched some YouTube videos from Mark Rober, a former NASA and Apple engineer who explores science concepts in exciting ways.

"It was really neat to see their interests come out," said Schwalm. "The kids introduced me to a lot of things I had never heard of."

Some students focused on life science and biology projects, said Schwalm, while others were more interested in physical science and developed projects to demonstrate concepts like magnetism.

Student projects can be viewed by visiting https://sites.google.com/a/lincoln.k12.mt.us/webpage2/science-circus-2021.