GNPAL Family Night Mixes Fun and Science

The Greater Norristown Police Athletic League (GNPAL) held its seventh-annual Family Science Night on March 15. The event featured over 15 separate experiments, each one designed to capture the imaginations of the family participants — or challenge them to an arm-wrestling match.

“It’s not always about being the biggest and the strongest,” Sean Foss, GNPAL Family Science Night volunteer, said. “It’s about technique and science.”

Foss, one of at least 30 volunteers at the event, manned the arm-wrestling experiment table, where families learned the biomechanics of an arm-wrestling match, and got to put such lessons to the test in an actual match with Foss, who just happened to be the 1990 North American Arm-Wrestling champion.

Families went from table to table, having fun making goop (a form of silly putty), paper-airplanes and the lid-blowing experiments of Alka-Seltzer rockets.

“Science is my favorite subject,” Denzel, 8, a Marshal Elementary student, said. It was Denzel’s first time at the Family Science Night, and he was happy to show off the goop he had just made.

Denzel’s father Duke, a Norristown resident, said he was pleased with having found the GNPAL.

“They are keeping kids educated with something to do all the time,” Duke said. “I love it.”

The science night originated through GNPAL Education Committee member Liz Kilcullen, who is also a docent at the Franklin Institute.

“I love coming up with the ideas,” Kilcullen said.

Willie Richet, a charter member of the GNPAL and interim Norristown Police Chief, explained that prior to the Family Nights, GNPAL was known for its popular youth sports programs.

“We got the school districts involved,” Richet said, of spreading the word to youth and their families. “We wanted to come up with something for the kids to do, because not everyone plays basketball.”

Other GNPAL Family Nights include a Bingo night, board game night, and, recently, a Math night.

“The only thing about family night is that they have to come with their families,” Richet, said. “We want them to use their minds and think, and give them a different perspective of science.”

For more information, visit the GNPAL website.