A taste of science

Mairo Ikede, a 13-year-old from Dartmouth South Academcy, dips a heated dental hand tool into a strip of blue wax before pressing the material into a hole in a false tooth. She is trying to rebuild the structure of the tooth so that it matches one in a picture.

The tooth-filling activity is similar to an exercise first-year students in Dalhousie’s Dental School complete, only Mairo and the other youngsters have only 20 minutes to do it instead of the four hours dental students typically have.

While brief, the activity has already made an impression on Mairo, who suggests she might like to one day work in a dental clinic.

“I just have an interest in it and it’s also a nice environment where I would like to work,” she says, as she presses a hunk of wax onto the tooth.  

Mairo, whose favourite subject is math, is one of more 300 students from across Nova Scotia chosen to visit Dalhousie last Monday afternoon as part of STEMFest — a week-long series of conferences, activities and events held in Halifax this year aimed at promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and innovation.

As one of the local sponsors, Dal hosted the students over the course of the afternoon for a variety of hands-on experiential learning opportunities.

The dental simulation also appealed to Dartmouth South’s Cody McDonald, who was impressed with the so-called Heat Wave device used to warm the hand tool before cutting through the wax.

“It’s actually really cool. It doesn’t heat using fire and all that. It has some technology on the inside that heats it up through the plastic, which then makes the metal hot,” he explains.

As facilitators signal the end of the activity, the junior high students pocket their test teeth before heading off to the next activity in the Nursing school and then on to other activities in the Ocean Sciences and Computer Sciences buildings.

Satisfying curiosity

This year's STEMFest workshops were developed in partnership with the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Early Childhood Development consultants and facilitated by partner organizations, including Dal and several other local post-secondary institutions including Saint Mary's University and the Nova Scotia Community College.

The fest also included a public talk with popular science communicator Jay Ingram, a Science Slam event, and various other activities at the Discovery Centre and the Halifax Convention Centre.

High school students enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (IB) and pre-International Baccalaureate programs were also on hand for Dal's afternoon activities.

Alison Tran and Dominique Tolentino, both 16-year-old IB student in Grade 11 at Charles P. Allen High School in Bedford, were thrilled to have the chance to tinker around in a Chemistry lab making solar cells with blackberry juice.

"We didn't know something edible could be used," says Alison.

For Dominique, who says she might one day apply to the Medical Sciences program at Dal, the activity confirmed her love of chemistry.

"I find Chemistry so interesting," she says. "It's really hard, but it overlaps with more fields and is more helpful."