Media representatives are invited to experience hands-on science aboard one of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s two traveling science laboratories when it visits East Forsyth High School in Kernersville next week.
Media representatives are invited to experience hands-on science aboard one of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s two traveling science laboratories when it visits East Forsyth High School in Kernersville next week.
Thursday (Feb. 19)
9:05 a.m. to 10:35 a.m.
10:50 a.m. to 12:20 p.m.
East Forsyth High School
2500 W. Mountain St., Kernersville
Elizabeth Cox’s honors biology students will perform a lab exercise called “Get a Clue.” Students will assume the role of forensic scientists and perform DNA restriction analysis (popularly known as DNA fingerprinting) to analyze drops of “blood” and other kinds of evidence found at crime scenes as they determine which suspects are guilty or innocent.
The Destiny Traveling Science Learning Program is a science education outreach initiative of Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, serving pre-college teachers and students across North Carolina. Destiny develops and delivers a standards-based, hands-on curriculum and teacher professional development with a team of educators and a fleet of vehicles that travel throughout the state.
Destiny and Discovery, two custom-built, 40-foot buses equipped as mobile science laboratories, bring advanced science and technology equipment to students who otherwise might not see high-tech experiments or what a career in science can offer. The mobile science labs are powerful visual images that heighten public awareness of the importance of and funding necessary for quality science education.
To be eligible to request a visit from a Destiny mobile science lab, each participating teacher must attend workshops to learn how to incorporate module activities and experiments into his or her classroom. Destiny offers 15 different science modules, each aligned with the N.C. Standard Course of Study.
The Destiny program was created by UNC-Chapel Hill in 2000. Its principal funders are the State of North Carolina and GlaxoSmithKline, with additional support from Bio-Rad Laboratories and from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Since 2006, Destiny has been part of Morehead Planetarium and Science Center.
Destiny Web site: http://www.moreheadplanetarium.org/go/destiny
Destiny media contact: Karen Kornegay, (919) 843-7952, kck@unc.edu
News Services contact: Susan Houston, (919) 962-8415, susan_houston@unc.edu