TWU professors work with elementary students

Sept. 17, 2025 — DENTON — TWU’s Office of STEM Collaborations and Initiatives recently conducted community outreach to more than 350 kindergarten through fifth grade students at Denton’s Hill Elementary School.

TWU professors John Beatty, Ann Davis, Diana Elrod, Brandi Falley, David Gardner and Tina Gumienny led a series of demonstrations, including:

• how thrust and gravity work together to move rockets and planets
• sharpening observation skills with a lively game of Spot the Difference
• introducing coding basics as students used laminated command cards to build step-by-step programs
• the Mentos-and-soda experiment showing how gases escape and create dramatic reactions
• using dry ice to teach how carbon dioxide changes directly from a solid to a gas
• explaining how earthworms mix soil and recycle nutrients