In her first year of full-time employment with University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Leah McCluskey taught youth how to make miniature lava lamps. She led the students through an experiment that combines sodium alginate, a compound derived from seaweed, and calcium chloride inside a test tube to form the familiar funky bubbles. The experiment gave her a chance to talk to students about seaweed aquaculture in Maine, sharing why it is important to the state economy and in what ways extractions from the plant can be used.