Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
Move over slime — it’s time for gluch.
On Saturday, Celine Holguin, a lead educator at the Elementary Institute of Science, split her time between helping kids make gluch — mixing glue, water and Borax to create slime’s bouncier cousin and teaching others how to create an exothermic reaction by mixing baking soda, citric acid and water into an Erlenmeyer flask.
Put a balloon over the mouth of the flask and cold gas from the fizzy mixture will make it inflate.
Holguin was one of dozens of educators, researchers, student engineers and community groups participating in the fifth annual Southeast San Diego Science and Art Expo, hosted at EIS. On the institute’s two outdoor patios and throughout its labs and classrooms, kids and parents gathered around interactive stations featuring robotics demonstrations, silk-screen printing, 3D modeling and reptiles.
Helena Ortiz, 4, grinned as she cradled a 12-foot yellow Burmese python named Cora, with help from her mom, Emily Ortiz. Cora is cared for by the EcoVivarium Reptile Sanctuary and Museum in Escondido, and was one of several reptiles kids could interact with.
“She loves all kinds of animals,” her mom said.
“Don’t worry, it’s not going to bite you,” Helena advised the next child in line.
The goal of the annual event, organizers said, is to make STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) accessible.
“We like to call it deconstructing science,” said Beto Vazquez, director of STEM engagement and community outreach at UC San Diego’s CREATE initiative. “Letting people know that they’ve been doing science all along, they just didn’t realize it.”
Kainon Maxwell makes a paper rocket during the second annual Southeast San Diego Science & Art Expo at Elementary Institute of Science. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Vazquez, one of the expo’s lead organizers, said the event was also about bringing resources directly to families, “so coming out to the community to be of service with the community and partnering with the community,” he said.
That partnership includes ongoing collaboration with EIS, a nonprofit that offers free after-school, weekend and summer STEM programs for youths from local schools that feed into Lincoln High School.
“They can learn different science subjects, like chemistry. They could learn engineering. They could learn robotics. They also use art to learn about the science,” said Sandra Lebron, director of education at EIS. “So they are engaging in different STEM hands-on science all the time.”
Inside the ESI’s auditorium, Vazquez led a talk and demonstration on the science of tortillas, combining history and chemistry to explain the evolution of corn, the role of nixtamalization — cooking dried corn in an alkali solution — to preserve maize and the physics behind flattening tortilla dough.
Art and culture were woven into the event as well. Two lowriders from the Vieja Escuela car club — a 1964 Chevrolet Impala owned by Julio Trujillo and a 1963 Impala Super Sport owned by Felipe Figueroa — were there to demonstrate engineering and hydraulics, but also represent a decades-old tradition rooted in community pride.
“Hollywood has tied (lowriders) to gangs, but it really has nothing to do with gangs,” Trujillo said. “It’s the opposite. We do events for the community, fundraising.”
At a nearby table, Joe Hernandez of Mas Paz Leather offered kids the chance to stamp their initials onto leather keychains.
“I’m stoked for kids to have this experience — making something with their hands,” he said. “They get to actually see the letters come out. The kids love it.”
Carter Jach, from Robogenesis, shows Violet McGovern (r) a robotic paper airplane launcher during the second annual Southeast San Diego Science & Art Expo. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Back inside, The League of Amazing Programmers, which offers free coding workshops to local schools, had set up a hands-on robotics obstacle course. Kids used remote controls to navigate wheeled bots around foam objects — knocking objects out of the way, picking them up with their robot’s pinscher-like arms or trying to climb over them.
Jahcyer Winston, 8, concentrated intently as he tried to steer his robot out of a jam. He paused briefly to show off a bead bracelet that he’d made at the expo. “They’re clear because I’m inside,” he said of the beads. “But when I go out in the sun, they turn colors to let me know I need sun protection.”
For students who want to go even deeper, several teams from the FIRST Tech Challenge were there to demo robots they had built for competition. One such robot, able to grab and stack plastic bricks using a custom claw, was built by The Clueless, a team made up of students from different high schools.
Niki Luna,17, from Lincoln H.S., shows Garry Maxwell a robot during the second annual Southeast San Diego Science & Art Expo at Elementary Institute of Science on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025. (Sandy Huffaker / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Building the robot, which started with creating a 3D model, took about a year, said Aiden Lee, a student at Westview High School.
Lee said events like the expo help expand what young students see as possible.
“We love demoing because we get to show younger kids that this might be an option for them one day,” he said.
For Vazquez, that’s the heart of the expo: hands-on learning that encourages curiosity and offers kids a vision of what they could do one day.
“It’s really taking away the apprehension that people have, the fear, the ‘Oh, I’m not smart enough. This is not for me,’ And, really, just embracing science as being fun and engaging,” he said.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.