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On Saturday afternoon, April 20, the Science and Engineering Quad Courtyard at Stanford University was abuzz with the din of curious science lovers attending this year’s inaugural edition of STEMfest.
At around 30 booths, people stopped by to learn about a range of STEM-related subjects, from cosmic rays, solar telescopes, astrophysical magnetism and automobile engineering to orthopedics, electricity grids, neuroanatomy, bacteria and much more.
Lab tours that educated people about subjects like psychiatric disorders, polymers and X-rays were also part of the program. Around 3,000 people attended the event, according to estimates provided by the event’s public safety officers.
“Stanford has a lot of different STEM outreach programs, where there are student groups who might go into a school to do activities and there are summer camps where the students come here,” said Kyle Cole, director of education and STEM outreach. “But this is the first time we’ve all come together and it’s open to the public. There are activities from across the whole university … the best thing is you get to see a bit of everything that Stanford does in research.”
The booth with the longest line was the one where real human brain specimens were on display for people to learn about and, if they dared, touch. “I am here to get my older daughter interested in STEM because it’s easy to branch out to other fields from science,” said a woman standing in line, waiting for her turn at this interactive anatomy booth. A chemically preserved sheep’s brain and a pig’s kidney were on display at another booth. Dr. Tanya Thakur was busy fielding all manner of outlandish questions from children and adults all day.
“The most common question would be — ‘Is our brain this small?’” she said. Thakur made sure to tell everyone that it was not a human brain, which happens to be a lot bigger. Youngsters interested in applying to pre-medical courses thronged at this booth through the day, she said.
Joaquin Arig, an intern at the university, who was showing people how photolithography works, said, “It’s a process that is used in nanotechnology to put patterns on silicon wafers.” He and his fellow volunteer at this booth were demonstrating the process using fun patterns like smiley faces and stick figure drawings on special, hydrophobic paper. Using the brightness of the sun, the participants developed these patterns and transferred them onto the next surface. In the lab, UV light is used, Arig said.
Animal anatomy was a popular area at the event. At another booth, items like a lion’s skull, a cat’s stomach and intestines, and a cow’s uterus, heart and liver were on display. Alejandro Ceva, a student of classics and economics at Stanford, was manning the skeleton of a real dog at this table and making children guess what they were looking at. His sister is developing pre-veterinary programs at the university, hoping to promote animal science studies in coming years. Besides his love for kids, it was her enthusiasm for the subject that prompted him to spend the day helping out at this stall.
“Everyone thinks this is a dinosaur! I think that’s really cute,” he said.
Not far away at the cosmic magnetism booth, participants learned about how experts are able to detect magnetic fields far away in our galaxy. To understand this complicated science, they used everyday tools like small magnets and little pieces of iron.
“The kids really like the demos; it’s useful even if they just like playing with the magnetic demos even if they don’t learn about the galaxy stuff,” said Ben Dodge, PhD student of Physics at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), who was volunteering at this table. He enjoyed answering questions about outer space through the afternoon. “Someone was asking if dust would get in our way if we wanted to travel to other galaxies — that would probably be the least of our problems!”
Space enthusiasts also lined up to look through a set of solar telescopes and observe things like sunspots and solar prominences, most commonly asking “What am I seeing?” and “Why am I seeing these things?” Luckily, the sun is at its “solar maximum” this year, so there is a lot of activity to observe, said KIPAC undergrad Tirth Surti, who was helping out the institute’s astronomy club and solar group.
“I’m surprised so many teenagers have come to the event. One of them asked me why silicon wafers are always round and not square!” Yang Bai, a volunteer at the nanotechnology booth, who took a break from showing a group of kids how a microchip is made and what ferrofluids look like, told this news organization. “It’s been a good mixture of different ages of audience, this is a really good turnout.”