Manny Johnson, a student at Aspen Ridge Elementary School in west Ishpeming, watches “elephant toothpaste” being created using a hydrogen peroxide solution, yeast and dish soap. The activity was part of Saturday’s College for Kids Jr. at the Seaborg Center at Northern Michigan University. (Journal photo by Christie Mastric)

MARQUETTE — It might be elephant toothpaste in name only, but area youngsters recently got the chance to watch a chemical reaction to create this frothy wonder.

Northern Michigan University’s Seaborg Center was the site of Saturday’s College for Kids Jr., or what it termed “hands-on and minds-on” sessions on STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and math.

The classes were made possible by the NMU School of Education, Leadership and Public Service.

Renee Jewett, program coordinator at the Seaborg Center, said the program was for kids in kindergarten through sixth grade.

“This one’s a little special because it’s taught by our NMU preservice teachers — students that next year will be student teaching,” Jewett said. “So it’s their experience with students on their own for the first time. It’s really cool.”

Four classes took place on Saturday: “The ‘Bear’ Necessities of Plants and Animals” for kindergartners, “Wonders of Wind and Water” for students in first and second grades, “Eagles Don’t Swim” for students in third and fourth grades, and “Mixed-up Science: Chemistry and Physics” for students in fifth and sixth grades.

Kyle Lafrinere, an education major at NMU, helped teach the chemistry and physics session, which he called a “science fair-type day.”

Chemical reactions were highlights of the three-hour event.

“We going to start with some ‘elephant toothpaste’ and get into some Coke and Mentos, and some film canister rockets, and we’re going to end with a tinfoil boat experiment that we’ll be using some pennies that we’ve had cleaned,” Lafrinere said before the class began.

One of the experiments for the students involved them dropping pennies in four solutions — water, lemon juice, vinegar, and vinegar and salt — and observing what solution cleaned them the best.

It was the vinegar and salt, by the way.

According to the American Chemical Society, copper oxide dissolves in water, but it usually takes a long time. The combination of vinegar — a weak solution of acetic acid — and table salt, which is sodium chloride, helps to dissolve the copper oxide, and also forms the blue copper ion, which is soluble in water. Thus, the penny again becomes shiny.

Another experiment had the youngsters mixing a hydrogen peroxide solution, yeast and dish soap to make the foamy elephant toothpaste. Before they mixed the ingredients, they also had to make a hypothesis on what they believed would happen with the activity.

Manny Johnson, a student at Aspen Ridge School in west Ishpeming, said to himself, “I think everything’s going to explode in my face.”

Fortunately, it didn’t — and through the day’s activities, the young participants learned about elements, molecules, and chemical and physical reactions, as well as safety when performing those activities. They also learned about the types of tools they used, such as beakers, graduated cylinders, funnels and stir rods.

Registration is open for the summer College for Kids Jr. sessions, which are scheduled for 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 27 and July 11. Visit https://nmu.edu/events/college-kids-jr for details.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.