Keeping the attention of more than 180 kids for a full hour is not easy, but Ben Logan’s animated personality is well suited for the task.

Armed with a small hot air balloon, a smoke machine and a homemade hovercraft, Logan performed a series of scientific demonstrations that provoked a cacophony of shrieks and squeals from his audience — Martensen Elementary students — on Jan. 18.

“I love getting kids excited (about science),” Logan said.

“Plus, I don’t have to wear a tie.”

Logan is a presenter for Mad Science of Colorado, an Arvada-based group that offers several science enrichment programs for kids, including workshops, after-school programs, assemblies, birthday parties and special events.

The assembly put on for Martensen wasn’t just for entertainment. Logan used his experiments to teach the students about the mechanics of respiration, the dynamics of air currents and how weight distribution works.

Logan used a bucket sealed on one end with rubber and filled with smoke to show how the diaphragm pushes air out of the lungs. A jug of methanol vapor and a match demonstrated the sound of a jet engine. The caveat was a hovercraft fashioned out of a piece of wood, some plastic and a leaf blower. A lucky group of students were allowed to ride the device from one end of the gym to another.

Logan told the students his career in science was fueled by a childhood interest in how things worked.

The assemblies and other programs help open kids’ eyes to the world around them, and they complement existing science curriculums, said Cathy Stone, sales director with Mad Science of Colorado.

Although students at Martensen have a standard science curriculum, they don’t often get to see grandiose experiments like those in the Mad Science presentations, principal Rhonda Hatch-Rivera said.

Brigit Heynen, 10, has done a few small experiments in class, but she’d never seen anything this big, and she’s certainly never coasted across the gym on a hovercraft before, she said.

“It was pretty cool,” she said.

Hatch-Rivera predicted the assembly would be a popular conversation topic in the coming months.

“The kids are just enthralled,” she said. “They remember it all year.”

Mad science

Mad Science is based in Canada. Its Colorado branch employs three presenters and facilitates several programs throughout the metro area each week. For more information, visit www.madscience.tv