CAMBRIDGE, Mass-Some 200 seventh and eighth grade students from the Cambridge Public Schools will bring their science projects to MIT for the MIT/Cambridge Science Expo on Tuesday, May 5.
At the non-competitive Expo, about 200 MIT student volunteers will talk to the students about their projects and lead them on tours of MIT laboratories. The day will end with a Battle of the Robots presented by MIT students.
"We want to encourage the students to pursue science, and show them how interesting it can be and how much fun they can have," said MIT freshman Anita L. Chaudhuri. Ms. Chaudhuri is co-coordinator of the event with Ashok C. Chander, a sophomore in biology.
After the students have set up their projects, they will divide into two groups. One group will tour MIT labs to view the "cool stuff" going on there; the other will stay with their projects to discuss them with MIT student Science Evaluators.
This year the students will tour facilities including the MIT Museum, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Wind Tunnel, and the Edgerton Center. Mr. Magnet (aka Paul Thomas of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center) will also give a demonstration.
The first Science Expo was organized by the MIT Educational Studies Program in the spring of 1993. Since then it has been run annually by the MIT Public Service Center and its staff of MIT students following essentially the same schedule and goals. The Expo has been steadily increasing in size with each year, as the event is increasingly recognized within the Cambridge schools and around MIT. For more information: http://web.mit.edu/pscenter/www/expo.html.
