(playful guitar music)
- At school you just look at the teacher, take notes,
it's all very paper and boring
and here it's all hands-on learning and experiments,
and there's more discoveries
which is a big part of science that I enjoy.
- As you can see the red wire and the blue wire
are connected to a battery, connects to another battery,
(light playful music)
makes movement between it which causes electricity
which causes the vibration.
Here you learn about cells, you learn about the body,
you learn about electricity, gravity,
everything you wouldn't usually learn about
in just one class.
- As you can see, this is the beating heart, obviously.
You can change it into...
those are blood cells, vessels, veins.
I've always wanted to be working in a science lab
about biology, circuitry, any type honestly.
I've always been interested science.
- That became really clear in this area
that there were no informal STEM opportunities for kids.
It's one of the real opportunity gaps
in this country actually for kids in rural communities.
If these kids who are our docents
lived in Tucson or Phoenix,
their school might take him to the children's museum
or to the Arizona Science Center
but to get from Bisbee to the Arizona Science Center
with kids, it's a really hard trip,
especially when we don't have a lot of money
in the schools right now.
- My name is Jude Bruno, I'm 11 years old
and I'm in sixth grade.
I'm also a docent at the Science Lab in Old Bisbee.
I started docenting the second day it opened.
- [Etta] Yeah, there you go, that's it.
- My name is Angelo Encinas, and I'm 12 years old
and I'm a docent here at the Bisbee Science Lab.
- I'm Scout Day, I go to Bisbee high school
and I'm a freshman.
- [Etta] It dawned on me and my colleagues
that we needed some kind of environment
where the kids could go and have really exciting
informal experiences in Cochise County.
(slow somber music)
- While my friend was volunteering here
and he took me to the Grand Opening
and I just pretty much fell in love with everything.
There was a 3D printer
and I was watching this little bear being printed out
and then I tried the VR and it was just so crazy
that I decided I had to be a part of it.
I really like the slime, so I help with the slime a lot.
We mix glue, borax and water
and like glitter and food coloring
and then it turns out like this.
I like to play with it,
it's very relaxing to just squish it.
- My mom is a science teacher at Naco
and she's been teaching for about two years.
She's the one who obviously started me into this business
and honestly I don't think I can end it.
There's a little something that I love.
I want to be a computer engineer
and maybe even make some video games if I can
but I've always loved circuitry,
I've taken apart consoles, controllers, computers,
to see how they work and put them back together.
My dad did teach me a lot about it,
he was amazing, he was the love of my existence,
he was just a great guy.
He passed away last year, so I can't really see him anymore
but he still lives in my heart.
(slow peaceful music)
- There are kids that are here a half a day
playing with the stuff that's on the tables
and the slime and the VR so I think we got,
I think we were surprised by how interested the kids were
in the space and in spending time here.
(slow bright music)
We started the Science Fridays in the space,
we didn't get a lot of kids
'cause there's not a lot of kids in Old Bisbee.
So we're now in the annex,
'cause there's a lot of kids in those neighborhoods.
There's a lot of rural schools in the United States
that don't have school on Friday,
it was seen as a cost-cutting mechanism.
- These are all the pieces to design a chariot
that will look something like this.
(excited gasps)
- [Etta] We wanted to provide
a weekly science experience for kids
on Fridays when there was no school.
Right now the Arizona Science Center
is doing two projects a month.
So we're just trying to get the word out
and build into people's understandings
that on Friday afternoons there's Hands-On Science going on.
Building that reputation and getting the word out
been more challenging for us
than we thought it was gonna be.
You know we thought if we build it,
they will come, right? (laughs)
- [Instructor] And we're going to turn this
until the blue dot on the Sphero is facing us.
- Schools can't do this alone is the fact of the matter.
Teachers need to be kinda retrained
in how to do field work with students,
how to do hands-on science with students,
so the schools may not do it
the way we'd all like it to be done
but the schools really face a lot of uphill battles.
So we sort of feel like we're a partner with the schools
and we can do those things in the Science Lab
that the teachers can't do in their classroom.
- [Instructor] Raise your hands in the air if you're ready!
Go, go, go, go, go!
(children laughing)
Oh, that was out!
- [Etta] The ultimate goal
is to have some kind of permanent Science Center lab
in Bisbee and what that ultimately looks like
is something that we hope to hear
from the community about it.
(children laughing)
- Usually, people come here to think "Oh, it's just science,
"more school, great."
- Have you ever seen us do VR or make slime in our school?
I have not.
- [Scout] It's just so much fun helping people
and helping them understand science.
(bright music)