Quarked!™ is a collaborative education project between physicists, museum educators and designers that was developed to introduce youth to concepts of scale and the particulate nature of matter through hands-on museum programs and a website with animated videos, games and lesson plans. A pilot study was carried out to assess the project’s success in presenting these concepts in a fun and engaging way for an elementary and middle school aged audience, to investigate its relevance to teachers, and to explore children’s awareness of things that they cannot directly see. We found that children as young as second grade are aware of microscopic entities that can be studied indirectly. Our study also suggests that concepts of scale and matter can be presented in a way that is engaging and accessible to youth, and that teachers consider relevant to existing curricula.
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