Middle School Learning Labs

**Please note this is a 2 hour program experience.** Discovery Science Center’s Challenger Learning
Center is a mock space station and mission control simulation environment that promotes awareness of how technologies make space exploration possible. The simulation creates a cooperative learning atmosphere where students have opportunity to test out a STEM career underscored by teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Explore different species and their anatomy as we study the evidence of biological evolution. In this class you’ll see examples that demonstrate common ancestry as we compare species and their ancestry.

What does the geosphere tell us? Dig deeper through the Earth as you study the layers and stratify of the planet you live on. What scientific information can you collect along the way that can be used to guide scientists in the future?

Are solar panels and wind energy helping us curb the negative effects of human consumption of the Earth’s resources? Let’s assess where our weaknesses are and devise a strategy to help our planet. Water consumption and conservation will be discussed along with the construction of a prototype water filtration system.

Learn about the genetic code that determines our features and join us on the Dragon Reserve and Conservation Operation (DRACO) to breed your own dragon! We’ll learn the difference between a genotype and a phenotype and “breed” our dragons to create highly adapted new generations of dragon!

What do chemists have in common with detectives? They have to look for distinct patterns in order to identify what they are observing. How can we see things that are microscopic, and why is that so important for scientists? We’ll use models to assemble a variety of simple molecules and then learn what glucose is, how it’s made, and how it can be broken down to give us energy.