Sun, Oct 12, 2008
 Ryan Davis, 4, left, looks at the moon through a telescope as his sister, Erica, 6, tries to get a better view on the UA Mall. The two were visiting Tucson with their family from Pittsburgh. Flandrau Science Center sets up portable telescopes on the UA Mall on a regular basis. Its 16-inch observatory telescope is also open for public viewing. Tucson has a reputation for excellent dark-sky conditions most of the year. Chris Coduto / for the Arizona Daily Star
Neurological Associates of Tucson Operations Manager Trades/Construction Sundt Construction Small Business Owners Legal Munger Chadwick P.L.C Associat For Commercial & Corporate Transactions & litigation Trades/Construction . Welders, Fabricators for structural steel General TECHNICIANS Office and Clerical Dr. Wayne Goodner, DDS Front Office PT Office and Clerical Manheims Tucson Auto Auction Vehicle Title Clerk Tucson RegionMany ways to trigger interest in scienceBooks, devices, trips all spark kids' imagination
arizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.17.2007
Tucson-area scientists say gifts that could ignite children's interest in science — possibly change their lives — may not cost a lot, but they will probably involve some of the gift giver's time.
Almost without exception, the scientists were inspired by experiences — trips to observatories, museums, aquariums, national parks — rather than objects. Though sometimes objects — telescopes, magnifying glasses, toy microscopes and books — followed.
The hope is that these gifts will linger long after the usual plastic toys would have been ground into yet another annual layer of toy-box shards, relics of another holiday.
"The thing that got me hooked on science was spending a lot of time outside," says Julia Cole, a University of Arizona associate professor of geoscience and atmospheric science, and a contributing author to the International Panel on Climate Change.
Annual family summer trips to her uncle's lakefront place on the edge of a Michigan wilderness area set her off in biology, studying reefs and weather records.
She thanks those summers poking around in nature for her "opportunities to see some of these really spectacular places." That interest has taken her far: scuba diving on reefs around the world and to Nepal and Tibet.
She's trying to pass it on.
"Our 5-year-old tells us he is a scientist," Cole says. "He is kind of attuned to what we do. He is very interested in the natural world."
She credits some of that interest to gifts given by her mother, including a geology kit that let Jackson chip minerals and crystals from a matrix and a kit to grow a banana tree (now 3 feet tall).
"I bought 'The Planet Earth' DVD set, but it was a little too stressful for him," Cole said.
She said Jackson was too young to handle the dire situations some animals faced in nature.
But it's not too early for many science experiences, says Stacey Forsyth, K-12 education outreach director for the UA's BIO5 Institute.
"The early elementary grades are when the kids are so naturally curious and interested about science," Forsyth says. "Later, it becomes more of a chore than something they enjoy."
Her own motivation to pursue a career in science, and science education, is rooted in whale-watching trips and visits to the Boston Museum of Science and the New England Aquarium, both near where she grew up.
"When I look back at what inspired me, the strongest memory had to do with doing things or going on trips," Forsyth says.
The trips don't have to be distant or expensive. She mentions the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Reid Park Zoo, Biosphere 2 and Tucson Botanical Garden as places right here in Tucson that offer the kind of exposure that could light a child's interest in the natural world.
"Even something very simple like a magnifier," Forsyth says. "Very inexpensive. But that can be a lot of fun for kids to take with them.
She said children's science magazines, including Ranger Rick and National Geographic, make great gifts.
Michael Terenzoni, Flandrau's astronomy director, got his astronomy bug from a gift book, "The World We Live In."
The series of Time-Life books focused on different aspects of the world and the disciplines that try to understand and explain them.
"It was a present. Dioramas, pictures of nature," Terenzoni recalls. "The first space art in a book for young people. We have some of that space art here at the science center.
"So I got this book, and I wanted to see all the things that happened in the sky. Living in the New York area, you have to drive out a ways. People living in Tucson don't realize how good they have it."
The basics of the night sky make a perfect subject for learning with a child. This approach also echoes what must be one of the oldest in the human oral tradition: one generation passing on its knowledge of the night sky to the next.
It was the gift of a book to a little boy that launched Ewen Whitaker, one of the founders of the UA Lunar & Planetary Lab, on his space career, studying the moon and working on NASA missions.
Whitaker, 85, remembers getting a series of books with one on astronomy — "The Earth and Its Neighbors" — for his 8th birthday — in London, in 1930.
He found the sections on "how the stars were formed, how to follow the stars to find your way" piqued his interest.
The interest stuck with him, "but I couldn't do much about it at 8 or 9," he says.
But when he took a wartime job at an electrical firm in London, he says he was attracted to working on the spectrograph because he remembered that spectrographs were used in astronomy.
His job involved testing for impurities on the lead shielding used on wiring and other crucial wartime applications.
"I'm the one who had to test the lead covering on all the pipes that were put under the English Channel in 1944 to carry gasoline so the Germans couldn't bomb the ships taking gas across the channel to France," he says.
Whitaker joined an amateur astronomy group, gravitating toward a subgroup interested in the moon.
That led to a meeting with famed Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who offered him a job in the U.S. and later at the UA at what was to become the Lunar & Planetary Lab.
Looking back, Whitaker says he can point to those first books — which he still has in his home library.
"I don't have that sort of aha! moment," says Michael Drake, director of the UA's Lunar & Planetary Lab. "For me it was superb teachers, both in high school and as an undergrad and grad" student.
While in high school, in England, Drake says his interest in science was sparked by a physics and a geography teacher — and by class trips with teachers.
He says he is concerned that young people are not getting the solid education and inspiration that he did.
It's evident, Drake says, in the underprepared incoming students at the university.
"They weren't taught by teachers who were qualified," Drake said.
"We're trusting the future of the nation to these teachers — by grade six.
"The best present you can give anyone is a good education," Drake says.
● Contact reporter Dan Sorenson at 573-4185 or dsorenson@azstarnet.com
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