FRUIT, FUN AND SCIENCE FILL JAM-PACKED EVENT
Hundreds come out to first-ever Apricot STEM Fair at the Los Altos History Museum on Sunday, learning about the locally iconic fruit and science
The taste of a fresh, perfectly ripe apricot in the middle of a warm summer day can only bring one thing to mind: science.
Well, maybe not.
But at the first-ever Apricot STEM Fair, held at the Los Altos History Museum on Sunday, Silicon Valley’s rich history of family-run apricot orchards came together with modern science fair exhibits, bringing out hundreds of people young and old.
Wide-eyed kids gathered around an exhibit from 23andMe, the Mountain View-based genomics company, where employees were demonstrating how to extract DNA from an apricot,
using test tubes, dish soap, salt, water and rubbing alcohol.
“Look at that; that’s DNA,” Patricia Penton of 23andMe said to the kids as she pulled a wooden stick from a test tube with a coagulated strand of genetic information hanging from the end.
“It kind of looks like snot, doesn’t it?” she said.
Just steps away, under the shade of a few tall trees, Louise Pavlina Hering — whose family used to run an apricot orchard in Los Altos — was using her mother’s apricot-cutting knife to demonstrate how workers like herself would halve apricots by hand to prep them for drying.
She deftly sliced through the flesh of the fruit, exposing the pit, which she plucked out and tossed into an old steel pail beneath the wooden drying rack where she laid the apricots, a task she started perfecting when she was only nine.
“I love it,” she said. “I think it's great that all these people are coming out. A lot of people have stories to share of their experiences with this, and it's great for kids.”
Elisabeth Ward, the museum's director, said the fair's intent was to provide an intergenerational and intercultural connection point at the museum, which is situated on one of the last remaining orchards in what used to be known as the Valley of Heart's Delight.
“People who have lived in this community for several decades remember all the apricots in bloom, and a lot of them as teenagers participated in the apricot harvest, and they still live here in the area,” Ward said.
“So we wanted to invite them to the museum, make sure they got a chance to share some of their apricotorchard working memories. But we also know that the reality of this area today is a lot of people who work in all sorts of other industries that are related to science, technology engineering and math,” she said.
Shruti Bapna, of Mountain View, was at the
fair with her 4-year-old Agastaya, who was having fun checking out an area where kids can build towers out of dowels made from tightly rolled newspapers and masking tape.
“It's fantastic. I love the array of exhibits,” Bapna said of the fair. “It's giving me a lot of ideas for things to do at home with him.”
Gabe Washington, of Palo Alto, was at the fair with his 8-year-old son Xylen, who was learning Sunday about the different pitches of a kazoo made from wooden sticks and rubber bands.
“We don't eat apricots very often,” Washington said, but his son attends a STEM-focused elementary school, and is interested in technology, so he thought the fair would be a cool experience.
“I want to be a video game designer,” Xylen said, speaking while finishing up connecting battery wires to a fan motor.
There were also volunteers from the Mountain View-Los Altos Service League of Boys, showing younger kids how to use antacid tablets and vinegar to make film-roll canisters into miniature rockets propelled by chemical reactions, among other activities.
Helping to demonstrate the versatility of the lightorange stone fruit, there was an apricot recipe competition, judged by members of the museum and visitors. It featured appetizers, main dishes and desserts.
The apricot pizza, with a
bit of prosciutto and fresh herbs, was a very popular main dish, competing against braised apricot with pork belly and apricot crepes.
Jeff Harding, superintendent of the Mountain View—Los Altos High School District, grew up in Cupertino and said there's nothing else quite like the taste of an apricot fresh from the orchard, which he remembers from childhood.
“Apricots in their purest sense, there's a flavor that imprints in your brain,” he said. “They're just different.”