MIDDLETON — Yesterday, Emily Mancaniello, 7, learned that science isn't always easy. Sometimes there are 100-amp electric sparks a few feet from your head; other times, there can be heavy magnets that get hot, and then hotter, as electricity courses around them.
In all, though, Emily and other Fuller Meadow School second-grade students enjoyed their encounter with MIT's "Mr. Magnet," Paul Thomas, who powers part of his traveling show with a million volts, a small puddle of liquid nitrogen and plenty of magnets.
"Whoa-ah!" Kelsey Kubota, 7, said as he used a torch to test whether magnets lose strength when they get warm. They did. Thomas had another plan for the students.
"Next, we're going to use some liquid nitrogen and make something 196 degrees (Celsius) below zero," he said, before donning gloves and working carefully. A few minutes later, Kelsey was carefully using a pair of tweezers to get a superconducting magnet to spin as it levitated about a third of an inch above another magnet.
Thomas said later that Kelsey was spinning a "high-temperature superconductor." It worked with liquid nitrogen at 321 degrees below zero in the Fahrenheit scale that most Americans, but not as many physicists, use.
Two students tried to take a pair of 2-foot-long magnets and either push them together or pull them apart. That lesson in magnetism left students giggling.
"Let's find out!" Thomas said. "By experiment, that's what it's all about. Come on, guys, push! Oh, they won't go together."
More giggles followed as Jenna O'Donnell, 7, wielded a loop of wire to pick up a basketful of paper clips. When the power was turned off, the paper clips fell back to the table.
Thomas, a 16-year veteran of the Mr. Magnet training, found ways to make magnetism and electricity relevant to students. He described voltage by asking them which battery — a dead one, or a healthy one — they'd put in their iPods if the devices would no longer play as loudly. Shane Hamcos, 7, knew the answer after reading a digital voltmeter.
"This one," he said, pointing, "because it has more volts."
Thomas tried to explain the value of a magnetic compass.
"That little compass, it always tries to find north, so if you're lost in the woods, or in the mall," he said, "you can use a compass to find your way out."
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