As volunteers for the Shorewood Recreation Department, husband and wife Vali and Gina Raicu have spent the last nine years helping students foster a love of science.
The Raicus, who lived in Shorewood for 16 years and have six daughters, say they appreciated all that Shorewood had to offer, but desired more extracurricular science enrichment for their children. Both earned degrees in physics and Vali, who holds a Ph.D., is a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“Gina and I were having coffee one morning and a lightbulb went on,” says Vali. “We were sitting around expecting others to offer a program and realized we could offer it ourselves.”
The Raicus knew that to teach elementary school students physics and chemistry, they would have to make it engaging.
“Our philosophy has always been learning science through playing, like replacing games with science games and toys with science-related toys,” says Gina. “We like the students to be able to build things in our classes and then go home and reassemble them, exposing their friends and siblings to science, too.”
The Raicus created Down to Earth Experimental Physics (DEEP). Initially offered through the District’s advanced learning department, the program proved popular and in 2014 the Shorewood Recreation Department added it to their course offerings. Today, the Raicus teach two DEEP courses: Vibrations and Waves, and Forces and Momentum. Gina also teaches three different classes during the summer: Famous Scientists, Brain Games and Science Experiments for Kids.
All of the Raicus’ classes are based on concepts from the DEEP program, which aligns with Vali’s research at UWM. The classes often culminate in a visit to the UWM Planetarium and the Prof. Vali Raicu and Prof. Ionel Popa research labs. The Raicus also try to balance the staff-student ratio by enlisting UWM students and postdoctoral researchers as volunteers.
“We love to mix physics and chemistry,” Gina says. “The students learn about things like the properties of water, they do balloon races and learn how to calculate the speed of the balloons ejecting air, they make movie projectors with glasses, and build telescopes so they see different ways to use lenses. We just try to do fun, unconventional stuff and all work hands-on together.”
This fall, the Raicus are offering DEEP Vibrations and Waves. It uses hands-on experiments and instructive demonstrations to teach kids about mechanical waves, light reflection, refraction and dispersion, and how these physical phenomena can be applied to develop physical instruments to study large astronomical objects and small microscopic particles.
“I just love seeing the kids excited about science,” Vali says. “When we hear a ‘Whoa!’ in a class, it makes my day. One time I walked into class and saw that a student had written ‘Physics is really fun (in disguise)’ on the whiteboard. That is the kind of stuff that makes us so happy and is the reason we do this.”
For more information about science classes taught by the Raicus, visit shorewoodrecreation.org or call 414.963.6913.
Photo - Gina Raicu, left, interacts with students in one of her summer science programs offered through the Shorewood Recreation Department (credit: Patrick Manning)