Soda making a lesson in patience

It was less than an hour into the
school day Thursday, and kindergartner Sam Bowerman was putting on a How-to-Ruin-a-Teacher's-Day

Sam, 5, was hunched over the table
in his classroom at Don Riggio Elementary School in Stockton, licking everything
in sight. There was sugar on the table, in measuring cups and in bowls, and
Sam was cleaning house. So was his table mate, Jackson Bruegeman, 5, sliding
mounds of spilled sugar from the table and -- mmmm! -- directly onto his tongue.

"My sugar," Jackson claimed slyly
between licks.

It wasn't exactly the point of the
day's exercise, but it wasn't unrelated, either: Jackson, Sam and their classmates
spent Thursday morning engaged in a scientific how-to with University of Pacific
biology students, who walked the 5- and 6-year-olds step-by-step through the
process of making and bottling root beer and orange soda.

A process, some of kids were happy
to learn, that involved plenty of sugar.

"It's like supervised anarchy for
a half-hour," explained Geoff Lin-Cereghino, a Pacific biology professor and
adviser of the university's honors biology club, which has visited three schools
with the soda-making demonstration and hopes to make the experiment routine.

A handful of the club's 30 or so
members came to Don Riggio's Brookside campus Thursday, breaking out bowls and
measuring cups after a quick explanation of the day's objective. Then they went
to work.

With the class separated into groups,
the biology students slowly went through the directions, carefully pouring ingredients
-- water, yeast, extract and plenty of sugar -- into measuring cups. They then
handed the teeming cups to the kids, who transferred the ingredients to the
mixing bowl, if not the table or the floor.

"It looks like blood!" one student
exclaimed as his team's root beer concoction turned an odd, reddish color.

"It looks like medicine!" Zach McKeever,
6, chimed in.

"It looks like -- ooh," Julissa
Mendez, 5, stopped midsentence, too distracted to complete the simile. She wanted
a turn to pour.

Then, as many were throughout the
morning, Zach, Julissa and their friends were quickly distracted, soon arguing
about whose birthday was up next and promising each other lavish gifts while
a biology student tended the root beer.

"This is a real gift to us," kindergarten
teacher Deborah Alexander said. The biology club hopes other schools will catch
wind of its demonstration and invite it onto campus. It would like to make soda
once or twice a month with elementary students.

"We try to do it when we have time,"
said Birgitta Warvarovsky, a Pacific junior.

Meanwhile, another root beer group
had finished the mixing and was ready to pour the concoction into bottles.

"Can we drink it after?" Armand
Sepata, 5, asked one of the biology majors.

They couldn't. They have to wait
two weeks, to let the yeast carbonate the soda.

This was a concern.

"What do we have to wait two weeks
for?" asked Ryan Koch, 5.

"How much days is that?" Armand

It troubled them for a minute as
the Pacific students began cleaning up the experiment before heading back to
campus for class. But the boys were quickly over the two-week wait, ready to
move on to something bigger and better.


To reach reporter Joe Tone, phone
546-8272 or e-mail

TEAMWORK: University of the Pacific student Alex Tran, center, helps Ciera Gonsales
measure yeast Thursday for orange soda. At right are Robert Imutan, and Michael
Clark. Pacific biology students came to Deborah Alexander's kindergarten class
at Don Riggio School to show them how to make soda. BOTTLES: Above, kindergarten
student Dale Hughes watches as root beer is poured from a pot into a bottle.
Left, the finished product will have to sit for two weeks before consumption.
(Record photos by CRAIG SANDERS

© 2003 The Record, a division
of World Companies, Inc.

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