Former Kaneohe resident uses fun to teach science

At Oak Canyon Junior High School in Lindon, Utah, spring is announced not just by sunshine and snowmelt and bird songs, but also by bottle rockets and hot air balloons and perfectly good eggs catapulted to the heavens.

Thank former Kaneohe resident and science teacher nonpareil Doug Panee for that.

"Springtime is when we blow things up, shoot things, catch things," says Panee, laughing. "I’ve done so many variations of the egg drop it’s not even funny."

For Panee, teaching kids to appreciate science as a way of understanding the world around them begins with stimulating their senses and exciting their curiosity.

"When I was in school, I knew what I liked and what I didn’t like," Panee says. "I didn’t like sitting inside and doing worksheets. I liked getting outside and learning things hands-on."

And so Panee continues to show his young charges how the theories and principles contained in their staid textbooks apply to the physical world. With Panee as guide, the students learn how potential energy converts to kinetic energy by watching eggs arc and drop through the air; or observe the relationship between force, mass and acceleration in the flight of a bottle rocket; or apprehend the properties of light and sound in the pulses of a homemade Rubens’ tube.

Panee, a 1975 graduate of Kame­ha­meha Schools, holds a bachelor’s degree in Earth science from Brigham Young University and a master’s in applied teaching from Grand Canyon University.

Over some 23 years of innovative teaching, Panee has accumulated an impressive list of honors and recognition, most recently the Utah Governor’s Medal of Science and a Sie­mens STEM Institute Fellowship.

Panee further makes his influence felt as founder of and adviser to the Oak Canyon Junior High Science Demo Team, which demonstrates scientific principles to elementary school kids, and as an educator with the NASA Summer of Innovation Outreach Program, which brings NASA’s STEM science curriculum to Native American reservations. He also mentors student teachers at BYU’s physics department.

When Panee isn’t explaining the miracles of the physical world, he’s busy experiencing them. A seasoned outdoorsman, he enjoys hunting, fishing and riding his mountain bike. He and wife Naomi also enjoy traveling to Hawaii and Washington state to visit their two children and six grandchildren.

Panee dreams of one day founding a traveling science demonstration team in Hawaii. Until then, he says, he’ll continue to share what he knows the best way he knows.

"I like the look in kids’ eyes when they see science in action," he says. "To them it’s magic."