ACS Kids Zone Fall 2024 engages the Denver community with ‘Picture Perfect Chemistry’

On Aug. 17, the Saturday before the official start of the American Chemical Society Fall 2024 meeting, an expected 489 kids and their families joined ACS volunteers at the Lola and Rob Salazar Student Wellness Center at the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) to experience hands-on science. Kids Zone events like this provide opportunities for the ACS, during its national meetings held every spring and fall in cities across the US, to provide important outreach to the local communities and inspire kids, who are fundamentally budding scientists, says ACS president Mary K. Carroll.

Carroll officially kicked off ACS Kids Zone with a speech of thanks to everyone who made the event happen, and she presented Salutes to Excellence Awards to Peter Bambini of the Salazar Student Wellness Center and to Kyoung Nan Kim of the Department of Chemistry at CU Denver in recognition of their engagement with ACS and the community to create a positive impact. The Denver community was invited to take part in the free event, and many of the volunteers who ran the experiments are from the ACS local section.

“Our volunteers have a passion for chemistry and a love for outreach,” says Robin Polk, program manager in the ACS Office of Science Outreach. “The overarching goal is to incite young people to be positive about chemistry, and to remove the stigma about STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], and to hopefully have them go into chemistry careers.”

Volunteers set up five experiment stations, plus a selfie station and photo booth, in the wellness center. The themes of the stations were:“Imagine Imaging,” using magnets as probing tools to help kids imagine tiny atoms and molecules; “Laser-Focused on Chemistry,” exploring how scientists study molecules and atoms using a simple model of an atomic force microscope; “Rainbow Spectroscope,” using a spectroscope to reveal the spectra of different elements; “Solar Protector Detector,” revealing the importance of wearing sunscreen, sunglasses, or other sun protection by observing beads that change colors as they’re exposed to ultraviolet light; “Light Prints,” testing chemical reactions with ultraviolet light, stencils, and a photosensitive material called starlight paper.

Kids Zone is a good way to test the success of activities ahead of National Chemistry Week in October, says Patricia Galvan, program manager in the ACS Office of Science Outreach. Galvan goes through a list of submitted activity suggestions and determines which ones can be scaled up and can last across a few hours. She also uses frameworks where her two main objectives are to make sure there’s an opportunity for kids to have a positive experience, whether it’s figuring something out or enjoying success, and that the instructions have a story to tell for facilitation. The experiments, including suggested materials and instructions, are available at the chemistry outreach activity library at acs.org/education/outreach/activities. National Chemistry Week will take place Oct. 20–26. This year’s theme is “Picture Perfect Chemistry.”