Science becomes real for Dallas students
The Grade 5 students gazed upon the charred volcano rock like it was the rarest of gems.
“I’ll pass it around,” said Don Bouffard, who treated the Dallas elementary students to a science presentation.
Handing the rock to a student, he noted it once gleamed iridescent with “all the colours of the rainbow.”
When the rock was passed to one girl, she leaned in to inspect it and, in an awed tone, whispered: “All the colours of the rainbow . . .”
Another girl asked Bouffard: “Where did you get the pieces from the volcano?”
He replied: “From the big island of Hawaii,” and she said, “Oh, I went there.”
Bouffard, a retired geologist and volunteer with the Vancouver-based Scientists and Innovators in the Schools, also showed the students 450 million-year-old fossils and models of prehistoric beasts.
“It’s cool to see their eyes light up,” he said.
He also passed around an asteroid chunk so the students could touch a “piece of outer space.”
Ten-year-old Steven Schafthuiz said he wants to be a scientist.
“I was just thinking that maybe I could invent something really cool that could help everyone in the world,” he said.
He added: “In millions of years, they say that Mars may be just like Earth.”
Marvelling at the asteroid piece, Chase Davidson, 10, also professed a love for science.
“The fascinating thing about science is you can create all these new things to put the world at a different level,” he said.
“It’s incredible what science can do.”
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