Why.

Occasionally, amid the sea of grabby hands and short attention spans, I am reminded of why I volunteer at the science museum. Today was one of those days.

About 2 hours into my shift, a couple of girls in the range of 6-8 years old appeared and I decided to try something a little different... this is the first time that I've had a kid assemble the salt water battery (4 cells, each consisting of a cup of salt water with a galvanized nail and piece of copper tubing) herself. Or, at least the wire part. I was kind enough to leave the metal bits in the salt water for them. I just wanted to see what would happen if I said "here are some leads. Make a battery." It took over 20 minutes, but she did it! And she was so proud of herself, it almost made me cry. I helped a lot, sure, but she did enough of it that she felt accomplished and she wanted to show her parents that she had lit a light bulb "without a battery." That she had the attention span for it amazed me; that's the primary reason that I've never done that large of a "figure it out" type experiment before. Watching kids "get" something is a pretty fantastic experience, whether the kids are 5 or 50. :^)

I'm getting a bit better at recognizing what type of people I'm dealing with so that I can do things that will at least teach them something at their level in the amount of time that they're willing to hang around. And for some of them, that means saying "hey, look! A puzzle!" and pulling out the pentamino puzzles. Batteries just don't captivate everybody equally. If I had to pluck one stereotype from my experience, I would say that it is that fathers at the science museum with their daughter(s) are almost universally awesome. I could hypothesize on why, but I think I've already made enough assumptive leaps as it is.