DEDHAM - Middle School science teacher Alice Machinist said people who don't think women need more encouragement to pursue a career in science should look at what most kids in her school produce when she asks them to draw a scientist.
"They always draw a male, a white male, in a lab coat with glasses and wild and crazy hair," she said during A Science Event for Girls, a program designed to change that perception by introducing girls to women who work in the real world as scientists for universities and private companies.
Science teachers at the school chose about a dozen girls from each of their classes to participate, which kicked off with Joanne Kamens, who has a doctorate in genetics and works for Abbott Laboratory, a pharmaceutical company based in Worcester, demonstrating some scientific facts.
Kamens is also the president of the Massachusetts chapter of the Association for Women in Science, a national group dedicated to encouraging girls' interest in science through programs like Friday's event in Dedham.
In a white lab coat, Kamens did several simple demonstrations covering three major areas of scientific study. For physics, she dropped an open-faced peanut butter sandwich off a ladder to illustrate how weight and other properties can make the peanut butter side hit the floor first.
She demonstrated chemistry by using litmus paper to identify a clear liquid as being chlorine (it turned the litmus paper red). For biology, she handed out strips of paper treated with a chemical that is tasteless unless a person possesses a certain gene.
After the demonstrations, Kamens and two other woman scientists, including Harvard University researcher Nancy Evans and Sarah Oravetz, who makes defibrillators and pacemakers for St. Jude Medical Corp., divided the kids into groups for experiments and activities, including building a parachute, testing the density of bottled liquids, and playing a game to guess Evans' field of science. (She's an astrophysicist.)
Kamens said the experiments themselves are similar to what the girls often do in their science classes, but the idea this time is to use real women who are scientists as an inspiration. Removing boys from the room also removes a prejudice Kamens said prevents girls from expressing themselves in class.
"It's uncool to be smart and when it's just girls, that goes away," she said.
Shelly Whalen, who teaches science at the middle school and whose sister is a geneticist at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, said she suggested the idea of the program to her fellow science teachers after she went to a recent Association for Women in Science meeting in Boston.
