The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Sisters Elementary School students got a special visit from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.

Thanks to a grant from the Sisters-based Roundhouse Foundation, Chuck Barnes, an outreach coordinator for OMSI, spent Tuesday afternoon in an assembly talking about "Wild Weather" with all of the students.

Barnes immediately captured the students' attention with his energetic style and outgoing personality. His presentation included discussions of the two elements that make weather - temperature and pressure. Making it snow indoors, watching a balloon get sucked into a small jar, and the fire vortex were all favorite features of the presentation for the students. Students also loved the dry ice bubbles from the Bubbelator 9000. After several experiments, students were on their feet cheering for science.

Barnes' travel with OMSI has taken him all over the western United States. He says his job is to "spread the good word of science and inspire students to say 'cool! I wanna know more.'"

"OMSI was fantastic," said second-grade teacher Gretchen Lane. "I think it's great we can bring engaging and interactive science experiments to the kids - especially to demonstrate those more difficult concepts with fun and exciting high-level experiments."

The following day Barnes set up a series of brain-teasers and puzzles in the gymnasium for a science festival. Students came in with others from their grade level and were able to try different activities either alone or with a group. The brain-teasers challenged students to think differently about problems in order to come up with a solution.

There was also a '"touch table" at the event. On the touch table were a variety of different skins and hides from animals from all over, including the skin of a reticulated anaconda - the longest snake in the world. Students were able to get their hands on a bear and pig skull, moose and deer antlers, and got to see a complete frog skeleton.

"Everyone wanted to be on stage during the assembly," said Lane. "They were so excited to come back the next day and interact more with the presenter and all of the stations. It was all they talked about all day."

"OMSI was awesome!" said fourth-grader Preston Krone. "I figured out every problem (in the brain teasers). The fire vortex on the record player was very cool."

Barnes made sure to share with the students how important it is to stretch their brains, "no matter what you want to do - be an artist, a magician or a scientist - you need your brains to learn something new."