Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 02/99) - Scott Tabachnick is a mad scientist.

Not necessarily the kind with white, wizened hair, concocting secret elixirs or trying to raise the dead with bolts of lightening. Although his lab coat is a bit tattered, he is a member of a team known as Mad Science that has been travelling the country for several years, showing kids that science can actually be a lot of fun.

This summer, Tabachnick and another "mad scientist," Sylvie Dussault, are making their way through 33 communities in the Yukon, NWT and Nunavut in their attempt to show the lighter side of science.

According to Tabachnick, as a kid he didn't even like science.

"I actually hated science when I was going to school," Tabachnick said. "But I needed a part-time job when I was going to university to pay off my books and stuff.

"A long-time friend of mine in Montreal, Lee Shulkin, owner of the Mad Science franchise, asked me to come in for training. He didn't offer me a job right away because he knew of my low opinion of science.

"In four hours of training, I learned more about science than I had through all of high school."

Figuring that he could learn more about science through his friend's method, Tabachnick thought that other kids who were like himself, with a certain disinterest in scientific reasoning, could learn just as easily as he did. Thus, another mad scientist was born.

Since his initial training, Tabachnick has spent the last two years travelling across Canada instructing kids on how to make their own slime and bottle rockets, among other nifty tricks that make him seem almost more like a magician than a scientist.

According to Tabachnick, some kids still appreciate the actual science more than others.

"Kids are kids," Tabachnick said. "They're pretty much the same anywhere. You got kids who hang on to pretty much every word and you have kids that don't care for what's being said -- they just want to see the rockets blast or see some slime."

Tabachnick contends that, while visiting the North, life has become a little different than what he's use to in his home town of Montreal.

"It's beautiful up here. I love it. You don't see scenery like this in Montreal. I guess the flipside is that we don't have the mosquitoes and the horseflies.

"I saw a buffalo right outside my hotel window in Nahanni Butte. A dog came by and chased it away."