Let’s take science to state and county fairs

Last Sunday I went for a midday run from my house in the Capitol Hill district of Washington, DC, to the Lincoln Memorial and back. It was a sunny day. Crowds of tourists and locals were visiting the memorials and museums that lined my route along the National Mall.

Of Washington’s museums, the National Museum of Natural History is the most popular . Each year, millions of visitors tour the museum’s collections of dinosaur bones, gems, live insects, and other natural objects. Science, which is what the museum displays, is evidently popular.

The public’s hearty appetite for science was also apparent at the first USA Science and Engineering Festival , which was held last September on the National Mall. Half a million people came to see and participate in 1500 hands-on activities. You can see some of them in the photo.

Physics Today‘s books editor Jermey Matthews took his two young daughters to the festival. He recounted their experience for this website’s Points of View department.

The Matthews family lives in the DC area. Getting to the Mall on a weekend was neither expensive nor time-consuming for them. But what if you live nowhere near Washington or New York City, which hosts the popular World Science Festival ?

America’s states and counties lack the resources to put on full-blown science festivals, nor can they all, as the organizers of the USA Science and Engineering Festival did, tap a corporation for substantial financial support.

But states and counties hold annual agricultural fairs. Like others, the “udderly terrific” Montgomery County Fair in Gaithersburg, Maryland, has a traditional mix of livestock beauty contests, pie-making competitions, piglet races, and fairground rides. A science pavilion would not be out of place there.

And if my hunch is correct, a science pavilion would prove at least as popular as last year’s attractions Joe King the chainsaw carver and Carrie McQueen the stilt walker.

If you like my idea, how can we make it happen?