By Matthew E. Milliken

mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684

DURHAM -- White aprons with outlines of internal organs? Check.

Blue safety gloves? Check.

Curious minds? Check.

With that manifest in hand, Githens Middle School seventh-graders boarded the Destiny bus for a special science lesson Tuesday. The 16.5-ton blue-and-white vehicle, one of two operated by UNC Chapel Hill's Morehead Planetarium, stopped in Durham for the first of many visits to North Carolina schools over the 2009-10 academic year.

Under the patient tutelage of Nick Hoffman, two of Harlyn Strongoli's classes were taught how to arrange testing stations in order to determine the blood types of four individuals. The goal was to give the youngsters experience handling lab equipment and conducting scientific inquiry in a professional manner.

Destiny's traveling teacher is Nick Hoffman, a 26-year-old science educator with a master's degree in teaching from UNC and experience instructing middle schoolers in different settings. He walked the class through each step of the process, including how to label their testing trays and how to handle the microdigital pipettes that were set out for each student.

One point Hoffman emphasized was proper use of the pipettes, which are to the eyedropper you may have used in science class what a new $100,000 sports car is to a 20-year-old compact car. He emphasized smoothly depressing the main button in order to avoid damaging the $250 devices.

"Gently on the way down, slowly on the way up, because I hear clicking from numerous sections on the bus," Hoffman genially chided.

Hoffman also highlighted the importance of not contaminating either the disposable pipette tips used to dispense blood and antibodies or the sticks used to mix the two substances.

"Remember, do not use the same stick twice," he said. "Set it down and put it on the paper towel."

Despite some teasing, most of the kids seemed to take the exercise seriously. "If they don't react to any of them, it's type O," one boy correctly said of a blood sample that had not clotted despite being mixed with antibodies for blood types A and B.

With only an hour per class to spend aboard the bus, Hoffman and Strongoli had no time to analyze the experiment before dismissal. But the lab work was part of a lesson plan that is consistent with state science curriculum and which involved discussion and activities Monday and today.

For Hoffman and his partner, operations specialist Lanny Oakes, Tuesday's visit was the first of about 80 that are planned for the Destiny and Discovery buses this fall. It was also the first activity for Dreams, a new initiative targeting middle schoolers that was developed last year. Previously, the nine-year-old Destiny traveling science initiative had focused exclusively on high schools.

"I think it's a wonderful opportunity to take lab experiences to schools, students and teachers who wouldn't normally have these opportunities," Hoffman said of Destiny, which he's been riding since last fall. "For much of the year, we're traveling around the entire state, not just as local as Durham is to us, and we're in areas where students really don't have access to a lot of the higher-tech equipment and lab experiences that can be had, so we're trying to give them the experiences."

This was Strongoli's first time bringing her students to a Destiny lab, although she worked with Morehead Planetarium last summer teaching science classes and taking education workshops that led up to Tuesday's visit.

The teacher was enthusiastic about her students' reactions.

"Didn't you hear the excitement?" Strongoli asked. "That was total excitement. They couldn't wait to get there and then they were totally totally engaged the whole time."

The only people left disappointed Tuesday, Strongoli said, were youngsters in her early classes, who weren't able to board the bus. She hopes that they'll get to do so come springtime.