Welcome to my lab!"" the scientist cried out to the crowd, to Bucky Badger and even to Santa Claus. ""Are we ready to learn? Are you ready to have some fun?"" Cheers rocked the lecture hall.
The scientist in question, Dr. Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, a UW-Madison chemistry professor, has been welcoming crowds to his lab for 39 years now, for a science-themed Christmas show called ""Once upon a Christmas Cheery / In the Lab of Shakhashiri."" This past weekend, he performed the show four times, and PBS will broadcast one of them later in the month.
The show is in the tradition on the Christmas lectures of famed British scientist Michael Faraday, who helped unravel the mysteries behind electricity, magnetism and light. Faraday believed science was inherently interesting, and enjoyed demonstrating some of the newly discovered aspects of his work to crowds. Not only did his work allow the public to understand better the nature of the world, but it also inspired future scientists who would otherwise have never entered the field.
""What I aim for is two things,"" said Shakhashiri after the Saturday shows. ""[No. 1,] to have people, everyone, appreciate what science and technology are all about. And two, for some of them who want to become scientists, engineers, mathematicians, to come forward and do similar kinds of experiments.""
And who wouldn't want to do such experiments? During the show balloons exploded, bubbles floated on invisible gas, matches burst into flames, metals floated in mid-air and beakers of chemicals mysteriously changed color by themselves. And that's not even counting the musical numbers!
""It's my way of sharing the joy of doing science with students, of course at UW-Madison, and future students at UW-Madison,"" Shakhashiri said, gesturing toward the throngs of children in the room. These kids, most in the 6- to 12-year-old range, loved every minute of the show, starting with the pre-show calls by Shakhashiri's assistants to ""express yourself vocally: Science is Fun!"" The walls echoed the screams of children excited by science. By highlighting the more exciting aspects of science, Shakhashiri said he wants to instill in his audience that science is an active pursuit - an exciting thrill with the occasional surprise.
""We try to make sure that people learn more about science actively, not simply sitting in a classroom in a lecture,"" he said. ""Science and technology are really the engines that drive ... progress in our society.""
And while Shakhashiri's experiments are a bit on the flashy side, he doesn't skimp on the actual science either, explaining to the crowd that the giant fireballs are caused by a combustion reaction between methane and oxygen or explaining that superconductors are special because no energy is lost when electricity is run through them.
""If you really want to have fun in life... you have to concentrate,"" he says at one point in the show.
But it's not all cool explosions and easy-to-understand explanations. Throughout the show, Shakhashiri and his assistants maintain the importance of safety in the lab, ""just in case."" Even his guests, Bucky and Santa, both eager to assist in the scientific fun, made sure to don safety goggles before getting started. (Bucky's were perhaps the largest ever built.)
And, unlike so many holiday specials, these guests weren't simply added bonuses: They added a lot to the show and even kept the action moving. Bucky assisted with experiments and provided a foil for Shakhashiri's knowing scientist, and Santa even provided some of the ingredients for future experiments as gifts, saying, ""You've been a good professor.""
Among Santa's gifts, though, was also a set of cards for each of the elements in the periodic table. Yttrium, element number 39, featured particularly prominently in honor of Shakhashiri's 39th year doing Christmas shows. The element got a whole page in the program too as well as an experiment devoted entirely toward it.
This quirky approach to explaining science is exactly what the show was about, and everybody seemed to love it, especially the kids, who continually ooh-ed and ahh-ed and burst into applause countless times.
""I'm always overjoyed by the reaction of the audience,"" Shakhashiri said. ""The facial expressions, the shrieks, I feed on that and it just eggs me on to do more."" Just like other holiday stories, it seems the giver gets just as much from his gifts as the receivers. ""It's very very rewarding to me, and I learn from it too.
