Tyler Collins, a sophomore at Pilgrim High School in Warwick, Rhode Island, said he was particularly drawn to the physics-themed sessions.
“My favorite part was learning about black holes,” Collins said. “We learned what would happen if you actually went into a black hole, and it was really fascinating. It’s called spaghettification.”
Mina Aqaie, a ninth grader at Pilgrim High School who recently moved to the U.S. from Afghanistan, said that her interest in science is just beginning. She was comforted to learn that she didn’t have to have everything figured out at this point in her life.
“I really liked that the students here told us about how they didn’t know exactly what they were going to do [when they started out],” Aqaie said. “They were just interested, and they wanted to learn, so that’s how they continued… until they found what they were really interested in.”
Aqaie said she also enjoyed a session on the genetics of fruit flies, which taught her that there are lots of open questions in science, and that each one is a potential career path.
“The teacher told us that some of the female insects are more likely to die faster than the males, and that we just don’t know why,” Aqaie said. “I was like, ‘We can find out! We can just do more investigating!’”
And that’s what science, and STEM Day, are all about.