Ice cream made with cryogenics, cool plasma demos, and a hands-on workshop for building motors were all part of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Day at PPPL. The event, attended by some 35 elementary and secondary school students from Orange in the north and Moorestown in the south, engaged participants in science and technology with the aim of pointing the way to future careers.

PPPL worked with the American Association of Black Engineers, the Glover Group and Rowan College at Burlington County’s Workforce Development Institute to put together the event.

Students rotated from a cryogenics demonstration in which they sampled ice cream made with liquid nitrogen to plasma demonstrations that included the hair-raising Van de Graaff generator and the always-popular vacuum chamber that makes a marshmallow expand. Students also spent time learning about electromagnets in the PPPL Science Education lab.

Sixth grader Sarlina Chery was one of many who enjoyed the ice cream. “I think it was really fascinating,” she said. “At first I was scared to eat it, but when I ate it, it was good.”

The event followed a similar 2016 program that brought 50 seventh- and eighth-graders from John Witherspoon Middle School in Princeton to spend a half-day at PPPL. Those students lined up to make their hair stand on end when they touched the Van de Graaff generator, watched how a Tesla coil lit up a fluorescent tube, and particularly enjoyed watching marshmallows expand and then shrink in a vacuum chamber. “It was amazing,” said seventh-grader Delmost White. “I want to come back a million times!”