Hope College will host its annual "Science Day" for high school students on Thursday, Nov. 2.
There will be a keynote address and several one-
hour presentations on a variety of science-related topics
from 9 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. Approximately 450 high school
students and 30 of their teachers from high schools from
throughout Michigan will attend.
The students' experience will begin at 9 a.m. with
the keynote address "You Are What You Eat: Decoding the
Diets of Ancient People," delivered by Dr. Henry P.
Schwarcz, who is a member of the faculty of the School of
Geography and Geology at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada.
From 10:20 a.m. to 11:20 a.m., the students will
each choose to attend one of more than a dozen concurrent
presentations. Topics range from "Tales from the Crypt:
The Mathematics of Secret Messages," to "Health Promotion:
Teens and Cigarette Smoking," to "The Serengeti: Big Cats
and Their Prey," and "Airplane Wings."
All of the students will also attend the 11:40
a.m. session "Chemical Magic," which features entertaining
demonstrations of the principles of chemistry.
Most of the sessions are led by members of the
Hope faculty. In addition to Schwarcz's talk, one of the
student-oriented presentations will be made by Dr. Kevin
Rebhan, a 1984 Hope graduate who is a dentist practicing in
Zeeland, and one of the event's workshops for teachers will
be led by Dr. John Goudie of the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics
& Science Center.
Science Day is sponsored by Hope in an effort to
introduce high school faculty and students in areas of
current research and social interest in the sciences, and to
the wide variety of science programs at the college. Hope
departments participating in the day include biology,
chemistry, mathematics, nursing, and physics and
engineering.