Mixing science with a dash of Halloween magic, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry hosted its third annual Halloween Demo Show on Friday, October 25, in the Science Center Quad.

Students and faculty from the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department worked together to bring science to life, dazzling an enthusiastic crowd of more than 80 children, families, and community members with demonstrations of Halloween-themed experiments and explosive reactions. The demonstrations included fire-breathing pumpkins, “screaming” gummy bears, a pingpong explosion, and several liquid nitrogen eruptions.

Along with the large-scale demonstrations, there were also kids' activity tables, where children could dress up like scientists, make slime, and other fun science-related experiments.

"As students, we love running the demo show because we like to share our love of science with the surrounding community," says Shreya Patel ’25, a chemistry major and president of the Swarthmore’s Chemistry Club. "We get so excited over our laboratory results in our classes and in our research. We hope that showing kids how fun science can be will help inspire them to have the same kind of admiration for all of the work that scientists do, and maybe inspire them to grow up and study at Swarthmore and become chemists like us."