Students sit on stools in a lab, all of their attention focused on the guest professor standing at the front of the classroom. He pulls a rubber ball out of a container of liquid nitrogen, and tosses it to the ground as if he were going to bounce it. Instead, the ball, frozen, shatters into pieces. The students think it’s awesome.

Professor Stanton Ching is one of the six guest professors from Connecticut College who were performing science experiments with students at DeWitt Clinton High School on March 17. The hands-on experiments were part of a program that Connecticut College recently launched called Science Leaders, which tries to get students engaged and interested in science while they’re in high school.

The program is also designed for students who have already discovered a love of science, fostering their interest through research and close work with faculty.

Each of the six professors taught a few classes at Clinton on Monday, and there were a variety of experiments. In addition to the liquid nitrogen demonstration, students in another classroom worked on extracting the DNA of a strawberry, and others learned how to use household items for experiments.