Dr. Harold Ackler pours salt and hydrogen peroxide into beakers of water in a science lab on the campus of Boise State University.

“So this one is a corrosion experiment,” says Dr. Ackler, the Clinical Assistant Professor and Materials Teaching Lab Coordinator, as he starts ripping apart a scrubby pad of steel wool.

“It's intended to give students an idea of what happens to a metal when you put it in different kinds of solutions, different environments, basically corrosion or rusting, things like that,” he says as he puts a hunk of steel wool into four beakers and stands back to watch what happens.

This is just one experiment that teachers will learn how to do this summer at a special workshop designed to teach teachers how to make STEM more fun for kids.

“So the teachers at this summer camp are going to be learning how to do this, to do it with their students back at their schools,” says Dr. Ackler.

Each beaker has a different liquid solution. The fourth beaker has a mix of water, salt and hydrogen peroxide. After a few minutes, that beaker starts to bubble and turn an orange/brown color.

“The one with both peroxide and salt is kind of a nice, rusty, frothy brew,” he says. The beaker keeps turning a darker brown, with bits of rust floating on the steel wool.

“It's nasty,” says Dr. Amy Moll, professor and director of the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering as she peers at the icky solution in the fourth beaker. The third beaker, with just hydrogen peroxide, is starting to turn yellow, also showing some signs of rusting.

The ASM Materials Camp gives teachers the tools they need to create these simple, safe and inexpensive experiments for their students.

The goal, said Dr. Moll, is to get kids thinking about how and why things happen.

“Understanding how things rust, why they rust, how to make that better, that's applied science, right? That's what material science is. So you can see how it applies to your real life and we can make it fun,” says Dr. Moll.

Dr. Ackler says the rust experiment was a success.

“I think the one with salt and peroxide actually surprised me. It was faster and more aggressive than I thought it would be.”

Dr. Moll says they’re still looking for teachers to sign up for the free workshop this July at Boise State and encourages educators to take advantage of the camp and what it has to offer.