Lab for Kids is off to a bang in 2025! Today, I was in Torrington, CT at the College & Career Accelerator (CCA). Yes Torrington, CT! From North Connecticut to southern tip of Staten Island to edges of Suffolk county long island, our lab for kids team is there making a difference for education in the physical sciences! Not even long distances can stop our team! So If you are a high school in Connecticut, Westchester county, New Jersey, Washington DC, Iowa, Los Angeles, New Zealand, the Moon, or Mars, let us know and we will arrange a visit! HAHAHA!

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Today was great. The kids at CCA were wonderful. I stopped into Gabe Jenkins engineering classes and did our usual arrangement of physics experiments. The students were a little shy at first but once we got going, we were rolling! There were so many oohs and ahhs. The e/m experiment is the really the best – especially after we had such an active sun this year – generating a strong solar wind this summer.

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As many of the readers of this blog know, our entire team of physics outreach educators has been focusing on changing the narrative of physics (and engineering) education. Both Lab for Kids and Cosmic Pathways try to show a positive way forward toward training our kids towards the physical sciences. Yes math and hard paper tests are important. But so is the exploration, the curiosity, the fun, and the “oohs and ahhs”. We need all of them to have a successful scientist or engineer. Too much time in classroom can be spent doing math problems without getting your hands dirty. You got to get your hands dirty to learn! I am proud of every member of our team. Our past members are now shinning all by themselves in amazing careers of their own. And we have a bunch of new bright stars coming this semester.

I am also proud of the team at CCA. They are also building a bright future for their students. Before class most students talk or play on their cell phones. Not Gabe Jenkins’s students. They were busy finishing their CAD drawings. I had to pull them a way from their computers to start the “fun” demos. I put the word “fun” in quotes because I think they were already having fun in their class.

Gabe Jenkins, Taylor Van Antwerp, Daniel Cocchiola and the whole team at Edadvance have a really different vision for what the future of STEM education holds. Rather than waiting until the end of the process – senior year or even college – to get started with engineering. They start right away in nineth grade and make the students get their hands dirty right away. They give students hard problems right off the bat. And bring in students from across the region to work together. All while simultaneously allowing the students to stay at their home high schools for most of their education. Great Job CCA!

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Here are some pictures from today – the Adelphi students stay in Long Island today so there aren’t the usual number of pictures because I was hustling teaching – look at those beautiful classrooms: