Fusion Science Theater is a unique form of informal science education that combines theater techniques and participatory learning with traditional science demonstrations. This innovative mix allows Fusion Science Theater outreach events to engage the full spectrum of learning styles. Kids learn better when they get into the act!
Listen to Fusion Science Theater executive director Holly Walter Kerby and FST actor and UW-Madison environmental chemist Chris Babiarz interviewed on WORT-FM, April 18, 2008.
Fusion Science Theater is now on YouTube! View a clip from our Science In A Box show, "The Boiling Point," below:
Kids from the audience "acting out" formation of the polymer SLIME.
"Molecules, any chemist will tell you, have lots to teach us," begins Terry Devitt in a press release from the University of Wisconsin. "Giving voice to the lessons of molecules and other props of science, as the lamentable state of science literacy in the United States attests, is no easy task," Dewitt writes.
Describing Fusion Science Theater's approach to education, Dewitt writes: "The project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is really about creating a tool, a model program that can be adapted by teachers and others to channel basic concepts of science to young children. The idea, says Holly Walter Kerby, a Madison playwright and an MATC instructor of chemistry and creative writing/drama, is to adapt the techniques of theater - theme, character and dramatic question - to teaching science to young people."
To learn more, go to "Using Street Theater to Channel the Lessons of Molecules."