Amanda Preske remembers how a beloved middle school teacher would dazzle the room with interactive chemistry demonstrations, creating spectacles with magnesium and other substances to captivate her classmates. The lessons left her mesmerized, eager to dig in with her own hands and experiment.
Around that same time, Preske was discovering another passion: jewelry design. Once she began studying chemistry at college in New York state, she began taking art classes at night and incorporating discarded circuit boards and electronic waste into her designs.
Rocketing forward over a decade later, the former research scientist is now blending her passions to help Northern Virginians hold a little bit of science in their own hands with Because Science, a new gift shop and craft space in Vienna. The store opened near the Dunn-Loring Metro station in October.
“I knew that [the DC area] was one of the major hubs in the U.S. for science and technology, since there are a ton of scientific headquarters and national labs,” says Preske. But even for an area with many firmly established science enthusiasts, she found there weren’t many options for STEM-focused shopping and gifting.
Now, NoVA residents with a scientific spirit can find an array of stand-out trinkets, tchotchkes, and accessories, like anatomically accurate hearts cut out of crimson-red circuit boards. Products for plant and animal lovers, such as toy figurines of what Preske calls “less familiar creatures” like tardigrades and axolotls, welcome visitors near the entrance. Head farther into the store for stacks of greeting cards with silly science sayings for every occasion (looking to cell-ebrate a loved one?) and earrings shaped like atoms and strands of DNA.
Most of all, Preske wants people to have a place to come, roll up their sleeves, and try some science crafting themselves. “I feel like a lot of museum experiences are geared towards children,” she says. “So adults that like science but aren’t going to go to a kid-centric museum are sort of left out. They don’t have an avenue to enjoy science or learn new things.”
A variety of events for both kids and adults are already available, like cloud and crystal science experiments and DIY electronics-waste jewelry-making. Through hands-on sessions, Preske hopes that she can help demystify science and do her part to minimize the “huge movement of anti-science lately” while “making things accessible, interesting, artistic, and fun.”
“I think that science doesn’t have to be a spectator sport,” she says. “You can be directly involved, even if you’re not a scientist.” 2674 Avenir Pl., Vienna, becausesciencedc.com
What’s in Store
1. “Floppy Disc” coaster set, $22.50
2. Charles Darwin card, $5
3. Mug, $22.50
4. Beaker candle in “Coconut Lime Verbena,” $15.50
5. 3D-printed interlocking octahedron necklace, $43
Feature image by Christin Boggs Peyper
This story originally appeared in our January issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.
