Dulce Vernal, 12, uses a 3-D filters over her eyes to view images of Mars at a 3-D imaging table during a science program at the Boys and Girls Club on 36th Street. Called Hands on Optics, it is created and operated by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's education unit in Tucson.

David Sanders / Arizona Daily Star

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Flying pigs, a tiny room inside a shoebox, dizzying 3-D pictures of Mars and disappearing pennies: It was all part of the magic of trying to turn kids from one of Tucson's poorer areas into scientists.

"The best way to get them interested in science is to get them when they're young," said Carolyn Peruta, a University of Arizona physics and astronomy major. Peruta and two other UA science majors have been whipping out some optical magic for pre-teens at an after-school program at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Tucson Inc.'s Holmes Tuttle Club House, 2585 E. 36th St.

The program, Hands On Optics, was created and operated by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's education unit in Tucson.

"I've been doing this for three years," said Peruta. "I want to be a professional astronomer (and) I plan to do outreach throughout my career."

She said it's not an entirely unselfish act.

"I want people to be interested in what I do," said Peruta, as she helped an 8-year girl look through red and blue plastic filters so she could see a Mars orbiter's photo in 3-D.

It was only one of dozens of "wows" Peruta and her cohorts earned late Friday afternoon.

One of the NOAO outreach specialists urged a confident 8-year-old boy to grab a miniature plastic pig that appeared to be floating on air above a pie-sized black dome on his desk.

He snatched at it but came up with a handful of nothing. That, in turn, cracked up his friends, who tried their luck and came up with the same.

"It's like 3-D!," said Esteban Fuentes, 8. Martin Ramos, 10, said that it surprised him that even after he knew it was an illusion, and saw how it worked, that it still fooled him.

Rob Sparks, a former high school science teacher turned NOAO educational outreach specialist, said it was an optical illusion caused by the dome's two halves — black on the outside, but mirrored, facing concave mirrors on the inside. The top half had a tennis ball-sized hole in it. The plastic pig was actually in the bottom of the mirrored bowl, making the pig appear to float just above the hole in the top half.

At another work table in the brightly lighted room, three girls were trying to figure out what was happening to the pennies they were dropping into a slot in the top of a 4-inch cube..

The box had a transparent glass front. They could see the pennies going into the slot but then they disappeared.

In another box, the pennies appeared to shrink and go through the throat of a tiny funnel.

It was all done with mirrors, but they were left to figure that out for themselves. But they did not jump to that conclusion as quickly — or as noisily — as the boys. Nor did they immediately try to take the boxes apart.

"It looks little," said Yelitza Pariea, 7, watching a penny appear to shrink and move through the funnel. "But it's not little," she concluded, visual input to the contrary.

"Mirrors," she and her two deskmates concluded somberly.

Nearby, after peeking through a hole in the side of a shoebox at a tiny furnished room with a checkerboard floor, Estrella Miranda, 8, popped the top to find that nothing in the tiny "room" was parallel. It was all an optical illusion, fooling the viewer's mind to think the room was square by distorting the lines in the floor and on the walls.

"I was surprised," she said, looking through the hole and popping the lid again just to make sure.

The kids, an even mix of boys and girls, were so "on task" that it was nearly impossible to break in to question them about what they thought was going on in front of them.

While thousands of Tucson kids their age were probably in a state of after-school videoscreen hypnosis, these kids were tuned into science, though there wasn't much evidence they were thinking about science. Most of them were trying to take things apart to find out what was making the pig appear to float and the pennies disappear.

That's OK, said NOAO's Connie Walker. She and Sparks said the program's writing requirement — the participants write at least one sentence each about what they observe at each station — guarantees something is sinking in.

The Hands On Optics outreach team and Boys & Girls Clubs kids will wind up this semester's program Nov. 17 with a star party hosted by a local amateur astronomy club. Its members will bring telescopes so the kids can see where optics can take them, said Rosemary Badian, a club staff member.