On Nov. 5, the Chemistry Club Outreach Program visited Northridge Elementary School to demonstrate a handful of chemistry experiments to the students. The Outreach program uses these experiments to preemptively spark initiative to have an interest in science.

“So basically, the outreach program is a select group of people from the chemistry club, who go to different elementary schools about once a month and do demonstrations and experiments with second graders to get them excited about science,” chemistry club president, senior Aspen Olson said.

By going to different elementary schools every month, the students involved in the outreach program gear their experiments to the time of the year. This month, the experiments were Halloween themed.

“We did something called the puking pumpkin where it’s basically just a chemical reaction where a jack o’ lantern foams out of the mouth. We also did like a rainbow graduated cylinder and you drop antacid tablets in it, and it changes colors,” Olson said.

Even though these students may be too young to understand real world applications of science, outreach helps spark that interest, and show the reward in scientific study.

“I think we need to show kids the interesting stuff we can do in science, you keep going to the books, which doesn’t interest a lot of people. You see numbers all the time, you can’t see what actually could happen, or the product,” sophomore Megan Watkins said. “Like engineering, you look at the math all the time, but once you see the final product you realize how worth it the work was, and the satisfaction you gain from it.”