Talewise visits Intercourse Library

On June 14, nearly 20 children and adults gathered at the Intercourse Library to enjoy the unusual combination of a creative tale mixed with science experiments as performed by Claire Golden Drake from Talewise, who asked the children to simply call her "Miss Claire."

Each experiment was performed more than once. Miss Claire explained that she would make a slight change with the second experiment and asked the children to form a hypothesis about what might happen based on that change.

In the program, called "Science Heroes: Saving Earth Together," Miss Claire began with the characters of Professor Noble and Penney, who worked together in Professor Noble's lab. She discussed how when they stopped for lunch, one made a banana sandwich and the other made a marshmallow sandwich. When the pair decided to combine the two sandwiches, they created something completely new. To demonstrate a chemical change, Miss Claire used a bowl of water and two chemicals. "When we mix these two together, the one that is a liquid will turn into a solid," she explained. Working with volunteers from the audience, Miss Claire showed the group the result of the chemical action after a count of 10.

In addition to Professor Noble and Penney, the story involved a villain called Dr. Sludge. During their lunch, the professor and his assistant detected a terrible smell from the parking lot. Outside they discovered a "giant mountain" of garbage. "It could only be the work of the super greasy garbage dumper," said Miss Claire, who instructed the children to sing "duh, duh, duh," each time she said the name Dr. Sludge. After the professor and Penney tried to climb the mountain of garbage, Penney fell, grabbing the professor's hand, she pulled him all the way down the mountain. "That's a chain reaction," said Miss Claire, who then performed an experiment involving a 50-foot chain of beads. She explained Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion, which states that an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it. Miss Claire showed how pulling on the beads started a chain reaction, and the students counted to seven to measure how long it would take for the beads to all hit the floor. The experiment was repeated with larger beads, and only six seconds were required to complete the experiment.

As the professor and Penney attempted to save the world from Dr. Sludge, Miss Claire performed a number of other experiments, including those involving evaporation, air pressure, and absorption. At the end, the professor and Penney defeated Dr. Sludge when he fell through a trap door into the sewers below and crawled away.

"Science Heroes: Saving Earth Together," was part of Intercourse Library's Summer Reading Program, which for 2023 has the theme "All Together Now." More information about the library may be found at https://intercourselib.org.