One of the things you may not know about the Bourn Lab is that in addition to being a space for tinkering and hands-on projects during the school day and the home of Gatorbotics Team 1700 after school, we occasionally open up the lab to the wider Palo Alto community by participating in Science Saturdays throughout the school year.
Mary Hurlbut, our 6th grade art teacher and Castilleja's site director for the Peninsula Bridge program, and intern Ruby Moreno (Casti alum alert!) work together to organize on-campus events for younger girls from the local community to get them excited about science and engineering. Usually, a hands-on activity in the science labs is paired with a related activity in the Bourn Lab. The extra cool thing about Science Saturdays is that the whole event is supported by our robotics girls!
Back on 12/1, we kicked off the year's first Science Saturday with a holiday-themed event. After a fun and slightly chaotic name game involving tennis balls, the group split up. One half went to the physics lab to do a simple circuitry activity involving batteries and light bulbs. The other half headed down to the Bourn Lab to work on Light-Up Holiday Cards, which also involved ... you guessed it, batteries (little coin ones) and lights (LEDs in this case)!
The girls, both younger and older, had such a great time and each of them got to take home a light-up holiday card. We can't wait for more Science Saturdays next semester!
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