Rocking On at UW-Milwaukee Science Bag

Rob Graziano, a staff member in the Geoscience department, accompanied by Geoscience student Miles Harbury, ran into the Physics Building lecture hall shredding on electric guitars. Graziano donned a long grungy wig, hard hat, and lab coat to complete the rocker-geoscientist hybrid look.

After a brief pseudo-rock concert, Graziano forfeited his “rocker” look and directed the audience towards the real rock stars of the night: The actual rocks on Earth. The show began with an informative PowerPoint about the ages of rocks, the rock cycle, and facts about Wisconsin’s rock history.

Graziano reassured the audience, jokingly saying, “That was basically an entire semester’s worth of Geoscience in one PowerPoint.”

The March edition of the UW-Milwaukee Science Bag series titled “Wisconsin Rocks!” had its first show last Friday. UWM’s Science Bag was started in 1973 by faculty members to make science more accessible to the public.

A volcano demonstration used foam from Foamation Inc., a Milwaukee company, that is known for making the original foam Cheesehead iconic to Wisconsin.

The Science Bag is known for its interactive nature so when Graziano asked the audience for a volunteer who was not afraid of small explosions and was willing to be destructive, many children’s hands shot up eagerly waiting to be picked.

Connor Fitzgerald, a young boy, was the first volunteer of the night. Graziano showed Connor how to test the hardness of different rocks by scratching them on a piece of glass and how to create metamorphic rocks using a hydraulic rock crusher.

To add to the “rock n roll show” element, each move Connor made was met with sound effects from Harbury on the electric guitar. Long drawn out cords matched the length of the scratches the rocks made on the glass.

Connor thought the guitar was a surprising aspect to the show, saying, “It was fun to be able to scratch the glass, I wasn’t expecting the guitar, but that was cool too.”

Throughout the night, there were many young volunteers. Some helped demonstrate the formation of sedimentary rocks using tubes filled with water and varying layers of sand and clay.

The show ended with an experiment to show just how long it takes elements to erode rocks. A volunteer from the audience was allowed 30 seconds to erode a giant rock with just a pitcher of water. When no change in the rock’s shape was apparent Graziano took an electric sander to mimic the effects that thousands of years can have on rocks.

Some misplaced props and equipment and an accidental skipping of part of the rock cycle were the only minor slips evident in the show’s first live performance.

Miles Harbury, the guitar playing geoscience student, commented on their first show, saying, “It’s our first night so it went like any first night, it will get tighter as we go. But it was fun.”

Over 60 people attended last Friday’s event, many of them are long-time fans of Science Bag and for others this was their first time.

According to the Science Bag homepage the “one-hour free show is designed for the curious, ages 8 to 108.” This was evident, the audience members ranged from young children with their parents to elderly couples with teenagers and college students in between.

When the show ended, the audience was encouraged to ask questions and come down to the front of the room to look at all the equipment and rocks.

Audience members were able to take home a state geology map and a small piece of red granite, Wisconsin’s state rock, as souvenirs.

Science Bag begins at 8 p.m. every Friday with a 2 p.m. matinee one Sunday each month in Room 137 of the Physics Building. Each month the topic of the Science Bag shows change.

Next month’s show is titled “It’s All About Us: Modern Human Origins” presented by Ben Campbell from UWM’s Anthropology Department.