Sep. 22--MCLEANSVILLE -- The students shrieked with joy as the "mad scientist" created wind, slime and fog on stage.

They desperately stretched their hands into the air, hoping to be volunteers in magic tricks.

And when the scientist announced, "It's time for a chemical reaction," they filled the gym with screams.

Derek Hagen, an educator with Mad Science of the Piedmont, entertained the students at Madison Elementary School on Thursday. He appeared as "Dr. K. Boom" and tried to get the kids excited about science.

At one point, Hagen brought three students onstage and had each of them hold a cup on their head. He poured water into the cups and played a shell game with the crowd. By the end, he'd poured all the water into kindergartner Maddy Wright's cup.

But when he tipped the cup upside down over her head, nothing came out.

Hagen revealed to the students that he'd slipped some sodium polyacrylate powder -- a type of polymer -- into her cup. The powder absorbed the water and formed a solid white hunk of material.

"This is the same thing you find inside of diapers," he said about the polymer, to which the students responded "ewwwww" and giggled.

Later he made a clear, viscous slime by mixing sodium borate and polyvinyl alcohol.

"This slime is a polymer, a substance where the molecules are chained together and allows the substance to stretch," Hagen said.

Anthony Diaz, who was turning 8 years old the next day, got to come on stage to blow out a birthday candle. When Anthony couldn't blow out the flame from 12 feet away, Hagen brought out his "vortex cannon," a trash can with a hole cut out of the bottom and latex stretched across the top.

When Anthony whacked the top of the cannon, a gust of air extinguished the candle.

"I thought it was really awesome," fifth-grade student Hannah Reyes said after the show. "He makes (science) entertaining."

Mad Science offers the free demonstrations for schools that invite the company to teach a six-week after-school program at their school.

The hands-on class is different from the demo because it's "a lot of science with a little entertainment thrown in," Hagen said.

The program is one hour a week and costs about $70 per student.

The Winston-Salem-based company has run the program in many Guilford County elementary schools, as well as schools in 17 other counties. The company also offers summer camps, birthday parties and other events.

"When I was a kid, I always had boring teachers," said Hagen, who didn't get into science until he got to college. "To actually get them excited about science is awesome."

For information, visit Mad Science's Web site: www.madscience.org/piedmont.

Contact Jamie Kennedy Jones at jamie.kennedy@news-record.com or 449-4610.

To see more of the News & Record or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.news-record.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

<< -- 09/23/2009>>