Fun with Physics Fair lives up to its name for the kids

On a beautiful day like it was last Saturday, parents try to get their kids to go outside. But with that, there’s usually a warning to not get too dirty or wet and not to make too much noise in the neighborhood. Kids got a chance to do all that with their parents’ hearty approval at the Fun with Physics in La Mesa’s Highwood Park.

On a beautiful day like it was last Saturday, parents try to get their kids to go outside. But with that, there’s usually a warning to not get too dirty or wet and not to make too much noise in the neighborhood. Kids got a chance to do all that with their parents’ hearty approval at the Fun with Physics in La Mesa’s Highwood Park.

The 5th annual event, brought to the public by funds from La Mesa Park and Recreation Foundation, and hosted by the La Mesa Boys and Girls Club, brought out kids of all ages. They touched, tasted, watched and wondered at ordinary things gone way-out fun.

Take cornstarch, for instance. Mixing it with water and some green food coloring creates a crazy substance called Oobleck, named for the substance in the Dr. Seuss book “Bartholomew and the Oobleck,” a gooey green substance. On Saturday, parents sat back and watched their kids mix their hands in the weird stuff which turned moldable when they worked with it, but once left alone, would start oozing into a melty substance.

Jaykkob Glass, 13, could hardly leave the stuff alone. “I think my hands are going to turn permanently green,” Glass joked. “I do want to be a chemist when I grow up.”

At a table outside the tennis courts was Skye Jollie, an instructor with Mad Science. She had several beaker tubes filled with dry ice. A group of kids surrounded her table.

“Have you ever seen dry ice?” she asked. Most shook their heads ‘no.’

After explaining that dry ice is created from carbon dioxide, she asked them if they knew what the solid form of regular water was. “Ice!” said Garridan Gonzalez.

“That’s right,” Jollie said. “And at what temperature does ice form?”

Garridan got the answer right again.

Jollie asked them if they could guess at what temperature dry ice forms. Garridan and his friend Alden Kurth, 8, guessed a high temperature.

“No, it’s a very low temperature. Negative 109 degrees,” she told them as she poured dry ice into a beaker. “It’s so cold that that’s why I’m wearing gloves. Dry ice can actually burn you.”

Jollie attached a small sprayer onto the beaker. The fog or steam is harmless. “Want to taste it?” she asked.

Garridan opened his mouth for Jollie to spray a small stream onto his tongue. Jollie then mixed some dry ice with soapy warm water. A mass of bubbles began to form and crawl up the beaker. At Jollie’s invitation, Garridan and Kurth held out their hands to take some.

Garridan’s mother, Andrea Gonzalez, laughed. “Normally, my instinct as a mom is to tell him not to touch it. But now I want to try it, too!” she said, holding out her own hand for the bubbly mass.

Of course, there were also the ubiquitous soap bubbles. Something about sitting down with a pan of soapy liquid next to your dad and making filmy bubbles float makes a kid’s heart content.

Sen Lim watched his son Rollin, 7, make a huge bubble with a hoop. “Woah, look at that!” Lim said, smiling.

“You have to go fast, is the trick,” stated Rollin.

Lim agreed. “But sometimes the wind helps, too. Okay, here we go—1-2-3!” and a long bubble swooped out from his hoop.

The one place in all the park that pulled out all the stops on fun was the rocket station. Volunteers filled liter-sized plastic soda bottles with some water and then put them upside down on a balloon-type pump. The kids stood in line for their chance to pull the string that would make the bottle zoom 100 feet up, a stream of water dousing the kids below. Sometimes the volunteers had to scramble up the hill to retrieve the rocket-bottles.

After Sierra Cagley, 7, had her turn, she laughed and went back to her mother, Angelica Cagley.

“I got all wet!” the little girl exclaimed. She watched a friend take her turn. “Wow, that was a high one!”

“I really like this event because it’s about everyday science,” her mother said. “I homeschool Sierra, so this is a great opportunity to bring school to her.”

Inside the Bradley Teen Center at the park was a group of volunteers helping kids try different engineering project ideas with Legos.

As Recreation Supervisor for the City of La Mesa, Michele Greenberg-McClung feels great satisfaction at another successful Fun with Physics.

“It’s all about STEM. Lots of people remember this fair from years past and have returned,” she said.

Such was the case with Xander Newell, 15. “I first came to the fair in 2011, and I always come back. It’s how I discovered the Brady Family Teen Center here, which is where me and my friends like to hang out,” Newell said.

Greenberg-McClung thanks the volunteers of SPRITE, Helix Charter High school Interact Club and San Diego Science Alliance.