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By Amy Mast

Educators with the lab's Center for Integrating Research & Learning travel all over the region showing students how to make everyday connections with science. For older kids, there are experiments, hands-on activities and follow-up assignments that integrate scientific concepts and curriculum. For younger children, the educators focus on encouraging scientific thinking and presenting science as an accessible, viable world that any curious child can inhabit.

During his outreach work in classrooms, Carlos Villa often asks young children to draw pictures of what they think happens at the Magnet Lab. The purpose of the activity, "What is a Scientist?" is to introduce students to the subject, explain how scientists and engineers work day in and day out, and to get them thinking about the way they view science and scientists.

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These pictures produce lots of smiles and keepsakes for Center staff … and many are too good not to share with flux readers. In a nod to our student artists, Magnet Lab scientists and technicians agreed to be photographed representing the scientists in some of our favorite drawings. All of the scientists are photographed in their real research or work environments ("natural habitat"), with some concessions to imagination (he's a handy guy, but research specialist Bob Goddard does not generally use two wrenches at once). View Slideshow