By Ajay Mallia & Richard Goodman
CSW-Younger Chemists Committee and CSW-Environmental and Sustainability committee participated in an outreach event at Anacostia Environmental Youth Summit (AEYS, organized by District Department of Environment (DDOE)) on May 29, 2015 at Anacostia Park, Washington DC.
This year 381 school students (from grades 4 to 8) from different DC schools participated in this event. These participants were from Burroughs School, Chance Academy, Hart Middle School, HD Cooke School, LaSalle-Backus School, Oyster-Adams Elementary School, School without Walls, Francis Stevens education campus, Sousa MS, Takoma Education Campus and Washington Latin School.
Volunteers from CSW provided hands-on activities for high school students. The activities were featured in two stations.
The first station explained about greenhouse gases, mentioning carbon dioxide as an example, and demonstrated an experiment that produce carbon dioxide using from citric acid and baking soda. Volunteers also explained the acidity of carbon dioxide in water with color change experiment of an indicator. A launch of ‘helicopter propeller’ to show that air pressure from carbon dioxide can act as “fuel” was one of the popular activity among high school students.
The second station provided demos about the subject of water: dealing with the effects of oil spills (especially on birds’ feathers) and how to purify “dirty water” with the P&G water purifying packets. The water pollution related demonstration also included selective removal of gasoline from water with a polymeric material.
