Natick Student Science

School Science Fairs & Outdoor Museum

Natick Science Fairs

In the good old days when you could use real animals and hard radiation.

Photo at right - 1960 Natick Science Fair

In the summer of1953 hundreds of Army researchers and their families moved into Natick and its public schools at the same time. The influx of all of these sons and daughters of military researchers brought a great deal of new expertise to local activities such as the High School Science Fairs. In addition this phenomenal growth required the nearly immediate construction of a new High School building, which opened after the 1957 school year. The annual Science Fair programs began in the same year of the Natick Lab's opening.

Atomic Vegetables - 1958 Natick High Science Fair

Karen Alice Moore of Beacon St. in Natick was the 1958 Natick High School Science Fair grand prize winner. The fair that year included a scale model of the famous NLabs solar furnace. (This author would be grateful if any readers know where any photos of older science fair entrants could be aquired.) Also included was a demonstration of Radioactivity and Ceramic materials.

Ms. Moore, the winner, produced an exhibit called Radioisotopes in Agriculture which captured the spirit of Natick's Atomic Age legacy. She acquired a mix of radioactive and bioavailable isotopes from the Tracerlab company of Waltham, MA. She fed her plants multiple "hot lunches." She then brought the plants and autoradiographs (Made by placing the plants on wrapped unexposed photographic film and then developing the images made by the penetrating radiation.) to Natick's Science Fair. Ms. Moore went on to the State Science Fair at MIT. The disposition of the radioactive material is unknown.

Other notable Natick Science Fair projects which mirror the study of Insects, Insecticides, and Radioactivity at the NLabs include:

1957	Loss of Effectiveness of DDT and Chlordane on Body Lice and Cockroaches
1958	Radioactivity and Ceramics, and of course Radioactive Tracers in Plants
1960	Model Atomic Power Plant (see photo)
1961	Carbon 14 Dating of Peat
1963	Measurement of radioactivity with Civil Defense Geiger Counters

Outdoor Science Museum

This project of the Lilja School in Natick produced an outdoor natural science museum at the Natick Town Forest, just south of Route 9. It was just a stone's throw away from the locally famous General Electric Dreamhouse - Natick's first all electric 'House of the Future' and 'The Generals' one of Metrowest's first postwar suburban developments. It's just a little farther away from America's second oldest shopping mall, with its famous "Spaceship Design" Jordan Marsh Store. Real mall buffs know that a second generation "spaceship" mall survives today in Woburn.

Below - 1953 photo of Lilja School student Priscilla Bock as she describes the museum project on WBZ-TV. Enlarge picture