Thanks to Michele Forney, media specialist at High Bridge Elementary School, students had all week to learn first hand that milk can make glue, and that pizza doesn't come from a pizza factory. A Gazette story tells how the Bowie school became the first in Prince George’s County to host the Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation's "mobile science lab" recently. At High Bridge, students heated milk, added vinegar and then strained water from the curdled milk to produce glue that can be stronger than a popular commercial brand. "Fifth-grader Malik Thomas, who made glue from milk on Tuesday, said his class was going to conduct an experiment to see if the milk-made glue was stronger than Elmer’s brand glue. 'We're going to take strips of paper and glue them together with the two different glues, then let it sit overnight,' Thomas said. 'Then, the next day, we're going to try and pull them apart to see which is easier to pull apart.'" Science lab instructor Wayne Buckingham said that he’s found that the milk glue is stronger than the commercial brand 70 percent of the time. Other activities included an exercise that teaches students that everything that makes up a pizza comes from a farm, from the tomatoes in the sauce to the grain that becomes flour for the crust. The mobile science lab is housed in a 20-by-50-foot trailer, and is one of several sponsored by the Maryland Agricultural Education Foundation. For school visits, teachers select investigations that can be integrated with their curriculum, and tailor a schedule that meets their school's needs. The Foundation provides materials to use in classrooms to supplement and integrate what is being taught on the lab. In addition to agriculture, labs focus on aquatics or biotechnology. Use of the lab comes with a teacher and all materials for the week.
Fifth grader Mercedes Massey summed up the experience well. "It was a lot of fun to do something different this week." | 
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