JEFFERSON TWP - The students in Dawn Heilman's advanced chemistry class at Knoch High School are firm believers in show and tell.

So the students presented a chemistry demonstration Tuesday morning for parents, siblings and grandparents, who were invited to the chemistry lab for a special presentation.

The idea for students to invite their families was the idea of two of the students in the class.

"We do experiments weekly, so we wanted to show them what we were doing," said student Kariane Stuebgen.

The 12 students in the class took turns wowing the audience with experiments that featured a variety of chemical reactions.

Before the students started, Heilman warned that because it was chemistry, it could be unpredictable.

"Some of the demonstrations will go very well, and some of them may not go well," she said, smiling. "But since these experiments can't be taken home, this was the best way we could share them."

Tiffany Allen performed the first experiment, used a "flame" test to show the audience how energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Allen exposed a burning flame to several different substances to show how she could manipulate it, but not destroy it.

Michael Volpe, whose son, Josh, was in the class, oohed and aahed during the experiments, uttering "cool" several times.

Volpe said he was impressed with the experiments and was glad he came to see them, because he never got to do those kinds of experiments when he was in school.

Amber Wilks did an experiment with a substance called Lycopodium, which she poured into a beaker of water.

Prior to that, Wilks demonstrated how flammable the substance was by lighting it with a match.

When she poured it in the beaker of water, the substance floated on top of the water, forming a sort of "scum," Wilks' explained.

Wilks then had her mom, Elaine, come up to help her with the next phase of the experiment.

Wilks asked her mom to put her finger down into the beaker.

"How does it feel to be asked to stick your finger in a beaker of highly flammable stuff?" Wilks teased as her mom looked on nervously.

"I'm confident," Elaine Wilks said, inserting her finger in the beaker.

Much to everyone's surprise, Elaine Wilks' finger did not blow up or dissolve. Instead, the highly flammable material formed a protective bond around her finger, keeping it dry as she inserted it into the beaker of water.

"Cool," Michael Volpe uttered from the back of the room.

Elaine Wilks said she did not know her daughter was going to use her in her experiment, but thought she did a good job with the presentation.

Wilks said when she was in school, they didn't do the kind of experiments she saw her daughter's classmates doing Tuesday.

"We didn't do anything nearly as much as this," she said.

After the presentations, the families were treated to lunch.