Rebekka (Bekka) Klausen and I also participated.
Evaluation available at Completed ACS Kids Zone Outreach in San Diego (2025)
The ACS Kids Zone San Diego 2025 engaged 90 participants across diverse age groups in an interactive slime activity designed to enhance understanding of non-Newtonian fluids. Participant demographics show primary engagement with elementary and middle school students:
Conceptual Understanding Transformation
58.9% of participants (53/90) correctly identified slime as both solid and liquid.
57 participants initially described slime using observational/sensory language.
29 participants (50.9% of those with initial responses) demonstrated a significant conceptual shift to chemical mechanisms in their follow-up explanations.
Knowledge Depth Analysis
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/22730710/
The Sankey diagram indicates substantial transformation in explanation sophistication, with participant responses evolving from experiential descriptions to molecular-level understanding. Representative quotes demonstrate this progression:
"Front: I think that slime is a solid because it is not a liquid like water or milk. You can't hold a liquid like you would to a solid, yet you can hold slime..."
"Back: I think that to make slime flow more easily, you would have to break the bonds of the polymer. When they break, the polymer doesn't have to hold on to other pieces..."
This shift from sensory observations ("you can hold slime") to chemical mechanisms ("break the bonds of the polymer") represents significant cognitive advancement.
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Through ACS Kids Zone 2025, we engaged 90 participants across three age groups, with a 50.9% depth increase from sensory observation to chemical mechanism reasoning.
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