Nathan Friede Teaches Kids to Build Batteries at the Farmers Market

Where can you get fresh produce from local farmers and build a battery from the 1800’s? The Playa Vista farmer’s market. Farmer’s markets were an important place to learn about the people in my community when I was growing up, so when the STEM Ambassador Program (STEMAP) gave me the opportunity to work with a focus group to organize an engagement activity, I knew I wanted to work with a farmer’s market. Before reaching out, I researched various farmer’s markets and organizations and found that Farm Habit, which organizes a variety of farmer’s markets in the Southern California region (https://www.farmhabit.com/) hosted a dedicated “Kids’ Zone” at their Playa Vista farmer’s market that my team and I thought would be a great place to share a science experiment with young learners and get to discuss science with others at the market. Thanks to previous engagement experiences with the NSF CSOE, we knew that the voltaic pile demonstration would be a great experiment to share. The experiment is based on the chemistry discovered by Alessandro Volta, who created the first battery. The demonstration involves making a homemade battery with acid, copper washers, and zinc washers, and can be used to power small electronics like LEDs. With a plan in mind, we reached out to Farm Habit and were happy to learn that the Kids’ Zone had an availability and that the organizers agreed that the Kids’ Zone would be a great place for our activity. We spent the next weeks planning as our scheduled date approached.

At the Playa Vista Kid’s Zone, we were lucky enough to engage with more than 100 future scientists! It was very exciting getting to see young learners’ fascination with their batteries. We brought a scoreboard to record the strongest batteries, which definitely inspired a few future chemists to stay at the battery building station a little longer than their parents would have liked. Using handheld tally counters, we were able to determine that 119 children visited the Kid’s zone over the five hours we were at the Farmer’s Market. We even received an email after the event from parents who were grateful for the excitement building a battery brought their daughter. Essential to sharing our science was our awesome team of 11 volunteers, who took time from their busy schedules as chemistry graduate students to come help share and discuss the magic of chemistry. We found that transportation of the necessary materials for a multiple table event was more complicated than we originally thought! Thankfully, the team at Farm Habit was able to provide resources like tents and tables, including a smaller table for children. In the future, we’ll be sure to bring a smaller table with us as well since this was a big hit with future scientists that wanted to sit and work on their batteries. Additionally, experience with outreach events like this through working with Victoria Russell at the CSOE helped provide useful practical experience for the event. I’m thankful to Farm Habit for allowing us to share the voltaic pile experiment with young scientists and to get to learn more about the community’s interests in research and science. We’re excited to have scheduled future events with Farm Habit and I’m looking forward to building more batteries.