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Two University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill second-year students will spend their spring break visiting communities in northeastern North Carolina with the state’s first-ever traveling science roadshow.

Jonathan Martinez and Steve Mow, student ambassadors for the North Carolina Science Festival, will present live science demonstrations aboard a ferry crossing the Currituck Sound, as well as at other community sites.

“One of the most important messages of the North Carolina Science Festival is that science is everywhere you look in our state,” said Jonathan Frederick, director of the North Carolina Science Festival. “We designed the festival’s traveling science roadshow to create opportunities for experiencing science in unexpected locations.

“It’s a fun way for people of all ages to learn more about science and the North Carolina Science Festival. Jonathan and Steve are great student ambassadors for the festival and for UNC-Chapel Hill.”

“We are hitting a lot of underrepresented areas where students don’t get a lot of exposure to science and don’t develop the interest for it,” said Martinez, an astrophysics and mathematics major from Gaston, North Carolina, and a graduate of Northampton County High School. “That’s something that we want to change.”

Mow, a biochemistry major from Longmont, Colorado, and a graduate of Niwot High School, agreed.

“I hope that this becomes a force for good,” Mow said. “Science is empowering, and getting people excited about it makes it accessible.”

As part of the traveling science roadshow, Martinez and Mow will lead interactive science experiences adapted from the popular “Science LIVE!” demonstration shows at Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, which produces the NC Science Festival.

The NC Science Festival traveling science roadshow will include these stops:

  • Thursday, March 17, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
    Southern Vance Community Resource Fair
    Southern Vance High School, 925 Garrett Road, Henderson, North Carolina
  • Friday, March 18, 3–6 p.m.
    Boys & Girls Club of Edenton/Chowan
    131 Morristown Road, Edenton, North Carolina
  • Saturday, March 19, 11 a.m. and 12 noon trips (plus others if the schedule permits)
    Currituck-Knotts Island Ferry
    173 Courthouse Road, Currituck (ferry terminal), North Carolina
  • Sunday, March 20, 2–4 p.m.
    Tyrrell County Public Library
    414 Main Street, Columbia, North Carolina

The Science Festival Alliance, a network of nearly 50 science festivals across North America, provided funding for the NC Science Festival traveling science roadshow through its “Just Add Science” program.

Published March 14, 2016.