Making science fun with the help of toilet paper

Three grown men used leaf blowers to send sheets of toilet paper billowing over a crowd of children and their parents.

And it was all in the name of science.

By getting air molecules to move faster, the air pressure is reduced, and the toilet paper rolls rapidly unfurled.

It was just the first lesson in the annual Wonders of Science program Sunday afternoon at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia. Children from second to seventh grades were educated and entertained with a series of experiments.

"We just want them to be excited about science," said Downers Grove North High School science teacher Tom Redig.

The children and their parents jammed Fermilab's Ramsey Auditorium, watching the three teachers use dry ice, liquid nitrogen, hydrogen, magnets and more than a little humor to demonstrate scientific principles.

Retired Naperville North High School science teacher Lee Marek, now an instructor at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, has been putting on the program at Fermilab for 21 years, and has appeared on the David Letterman's talk show.

Fermilab is home to the Tevatron atom-smasher, where physicists use giant magnets to accelerate beams of particles to high energies, before colliding them and studying the results.

"They use great big honking magnets here at Fermilab," Marek told the crowd.

So it only makes sense that this year's science program focused on magnetism.

Fremd High School science teacher Karl Craddock demonstrated how to put together a loud speaker using coiled wire, a magnet and a metal trash canister. Then he showed how a plastic coffee cup works just as well in place of the metal can.

Craddock showed the audience how magnetic field produces an electrical field, and vice versa.

The teachers also demonstrated how cooling down the magnets increases their efficiency, making them superconducting, like the magnets used in the Tevatron.

Redig said parents often tell him they hated science in school, but he tells them that the methods of teaching science have changed, with a more hands-on emphasis.

"It's learning by doing," Redig said. "So the students don't have to listen to me talking all the time."