Brendan Court is an enrichment program in which underprivileged students who are entering the seventh and eighth grades are given the opportunity to study mathematics, science, humanities, and the arts at St. Mark’s School of Texas during summer break. As an iGEM Team, we sought to teach and inspire the students in synthetic biology. We presented informative and engaging presentations that explained basic biotechnology concepts along with compelling and visual demonstrations that captivated the students.

The team has also been working with many programs to help promote the spread of biotechnology especially for the youth. One of the programs that we worked with is Brendan Court. Brendan Court is a four-week, tuition-free enrichment program for middle school boys that is hosted annually at St. Mark's School of Texas. These students are exposed to many opportunities that may not be available at their own schools, such as photography, computer and word processing, physical education, poetry workshops, model rocket building, and more. The St. Mark's iGEM team wanted to add bioengineering to this list, and the team worked exclusively with the students for one day. We divided the forty-four students into four groups, and we worked with two of the groups at a time. In one room, one of the two groups received a presentation about synthetic biology, smoking, as well as a tour of the lab while the other group in another room watched science demonstrations. Using a straw, the students blew into a cup with a bromothymol blue and sodium hydroxide solution and observed effects of the carbon dioxide they exhaled. Bromothymol blue is a pH indicator that turns blue in a base and yellow in an acid. When the students exhaled carbon dioxide into the solution, the carbon dioxide reacted with the water to form carbonic acid which disassociated to hydrogen ions and bicarbonate. This makes the solution acidic, and the color of the solution changes. We also showed them how to make elephant toothpaste using dishwasher soap, 30% hydrogen peroxide solution, and saturated potassium iodide solution. We first mixed the hydrogen peroxide and the soap, and after adding the potassium iodide, the chemicals react to expand and form a gooey paste. We also prepared microscopes and some interesting slides, such as some tissue or cells, for the students to observe. Finally, we made "super-tang," an orange-soda drink by adding dry ice to an orange-flavored liquid. The dry ice carbonates the drink, giving it the fizzy taste. After ten minutes, the two groups would switch rooms and receive the other presentation. Once the groups received both presentations, they switched out with the other two groups with whom we had not yet met.