- Kris Crawford
http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1036804
Anti-Dog Fighting Group Partners With Stanford University
January 7, 2010 – What do geophysics and space sciences have to do with dog fighting and gang activity? Not much at first glance. Nevertheless, Stanford Solar Center director Deborah Scherrer has become an active part of the campaign against dog fighting and animal abuse in the Bay Area.
The Stanford Solar Center recently formed an unusual alliance with Knock Out Dog Fighting (KODF), a program that works with juvenile detention facilities, alternative schools, community centers, law enforcement and gang prevention groups to stop animal cruelty and abuse by engaging at-risk youth in alternative activities. KODF was created out of the pit bull advocacy group For Pits’ Sake (FPS), a non-profit organization founded in 1997 by Bay Area local Kris Crawford.
The most recent addition to KODF’s repertoire of programs is Fun Science, run by Scherrer, a longtime pit bull owner and rescuer.
Scherrer and Crawford began collaborating on Fun Science in June of 2009 and it has since become an integral component of KODF. The program includes a number of hands-on activities intended to educate children about scientific processes in an engaging and positive way. Activities have included bottle rockets, dry ice and sublimation and to-scale models of the solar system.
According to Scherrer, one of the largest problems with the education of at-risk youth has little to do with the students’ learning abilities. Rather, in an educational system dominated by lectures and presentations, material is rarely presented in an engaging or motivational way.
“Many of the kids we’ve worked with are very bright. They’ll come up to me and tell me that they’ve heard of string theory, alternate universes and whatnot. It’s incredible,” Scherrer said.
In December, KODF was featured as part of the Stanford Solar Center’s exhibit at the 2009 American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, in the Education and Public Outreach section. Attendance was over 16,000 and Scherrer said she feels the project was very well received.
“We help [these kids] learn to make decisions based on discovery, analysis and understanding,” Scherrer said. “These are exactly the skills needed for them to move from inappropriate, emotion-driven behavior toward better, more productive choices.”
For more information about the award-winning Knock Out Dog Fighting program and how you can help Knock Out Dog Fighting, go to www.KnockOutDogFighting.org
Educators John Blair, Deborah Yager, Deborah Scherrer
The challenge is to engage students who have often performed poorly in school and shown little interest in formal education. On this particular day three separate stations were set up, each focusing on a hands-on science activity--one station with 2-liter bottle rockets (physics), one with dry ice (chemistry) and one dealing with the solar system and solar observation. The students were formed into three groups and spent about 20 minutes at each station.
Solar System and Solar Observation
Dry Ice Station -- Chemistry
Deborah Yager: Dry ice offers opportunities to explore phase changes while having good, clean fun. Students were first asked to name the four states of matter and to describe changes between solids, liquids and gases. They were taught the term "sublimation" as the change from a solid directly to a gas.
After forming groups of 2-3 students, they were given two styrofoam cups, each with a small piece of dry ice. They were asked to add a small amount of liquid dish soap to each cup and informed that hot water would be added to one cup and cold water to the other cup. Each group was asked to predict which cup would display the fastest sublimation. Students really enjoyed watching the bubble towers that formed (this is called Marge's Experiment for good reason -they resemble Marge Simpson's hair) that can pop and release "smoke" and their hypotheses were readily tested.
Students were then allowed to play with pieces of dry ice, empty water bottles (no lids! very important to prevent building of dry ice "bombs"), soap and/or rubber balloons that fit over the mouths of the water bottles and can inflate to the point of failure. They particularly enjoyed finding the perfect combination of dry ice "dust" (large surface area) and hot water to cause a relatively fast balloon explosion.
Dry Ice Station -- Chemistry
Plastic Bottle Rockets -- Physics
John Blair: I managed the bottle rocket station. I showed them how to set up, pump, and fire the first rocket, then told them they had to do it themselves from then on. Each 10-student group quickly took over the task, themselves forming into subgroups to add water to the rocket, use an automobile tire pump to build pressure, fire the rocket, and chase it down. They worked well together and often traded-off on tasks. They asked what would happen if they used more/less/no water, and I told them to find out for themselves by trying it out, which they did. One rocket did manage to clear the facility's tall fence, prompting a loud cheer for its success in escaping. What I saw with each of the three groups were a bunch of kids having fun...and learning.
Plastic Bottle Rockets -- Physics
The Stanford Solar Center is located at Stanford University. It is dedicated to sharing the joy and excitement of solar science exploration. Acting as the education and public outreach arm of the Solar Observatories Group, and funded by NASA, the Solar Center provides resources, activities, and projects relating to the Sun for teachers, students, and the public.
