Creative Kid Spotlight: Aiden of Whiz Kid Science
If you’ve ever searched YouTube in a hunt for the next great science fair project, you may have come across this creative kid, Aiden of Whiz Kid Science. Aiden’s videos are fun and simple, featuring projects that any kid can do with very little except for a few household items like eggs or food coloring.
The first question I asked Aiden was where he got the inspiration to record his science experiments and post them online. His response was pretty straightforward. “I wanted to earn some money. At first I wanted to get a paper route, but my mom said no because she said she’d be the one delivering the papers.” His first video was a science fair classic we can all recall—a baking soda and vinegar volcano.
In the three years since starting Whiz Kid Science, Aiden has posted dozens of his science experiment tutorials on YouTube and gained a following of over 60,000 subscribers. Ironically, Aiden’s school doesn’t hold an annual science fair, but he does enjoy sharing his channel with his teachers and sometimes they get to watch them in class.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is becoming an increasingly focal point in education, but many students still struggle with these subjects because they’re worried about getting the wrong answer or missing a step in an equation. Aiden’s advice to kids who are apprehensive about the hard sciences was very insightful:
“My favourite part about science is the experiments because I get to learn while doing something fun. Sometimes experiments go wrong or don’t go the way you thought they would but that’s why they are called experiments. You can try again doing something differently,” he said. “I would tell kids that it’s ok to mess up or be wrong because I’ve done it lots of times. I’m sure scientists and inventors did not get it right the first time.”
And he’s right. Thomas Edison, for example, made more than 1,000 attempts before inventing the first commercially viable light bulb. While Aiden and his film crew (also known as his family) usually film an experiment on the first try, you can see some of his experiments that didn’t go exactly as expected on his channel.
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In his balloon blowup video, he used way too much vinegar and baking soda but kept the video, anyway. “Science experiments are rarely perfect and it would be silly for me to make kids think they were,” Aiden said.
This Whiz Kid wants kids to know something else about him: he doesn’t just sit in his room thinking about science all day. Aiden also plays hockey in the winter and lacrosse in the summer. His other hobbies include jumping on his family’s trampoline and playing Geometry Dash on his iPad. While he lives in a small town, “where everyone knows everyone,” his YouTube channel has allowed him to connect with kids all over.
He hopes that, in addition to inspiring kids all over to experiment with science, he’ll be able to save enough money from his videos to pay for college when the time comes. The only thing left to figure out is what to study.