KC area schoolkids get their hands on science at EarthWorks
Story by Tim Janicke
A snail pulls a sled of sorts - a dental-floss harness taped to a sheet of paper. Dania Aguilera plops pennies onboard.
As the pennies pile on, the snail begins to buckle. By the time Dania reaches the 41st penny, the snail stops and the experiment ends.
Dania is part of a team of third-grade "scientists" whose mission today is to figure out how much a snail can pull. They've established these facts: The snail weighs 9 grams; 41 pennies weigh 120 grams. So they've come to this conclusion: A snail can pull more than 13 times its weight.
Dania's three-student team and 65 other third-graders from Fleetridge Elementary, a school in the Raytown School District, are spending the day at EarthWorks, a hands-on environmental science lab in the limestone caves owned by Hunt Mid-west Enterprises, just south of Wolds of Fun.
Her team is performing experiments in the pond habitat at EarthWorks. Others are immersed in scientific study in the cave, forest, prairie or soil habitats - divided into their own rooms around a central amphitheater.
Most of the experiments are based on authentic scientific questions: What does an owl eat? Is algae bad for aquatic life? And how much can snails really pull?
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