Staff Writer
What’s black and white and “read” all over — and sometimes even used to make chairs?
Well, newspapers, of course.
The students in a Robert E. Lee High School physics course recently learned just how strong a newspaper can be, but the lesson had nothing to do with journalism.
The project, which called for students to fashion together a “chair” using an unlimited amount of newspaper and four meters of masking tape, taught students about forces, said Lana Hood, who teaches the Pre-Advanced Placement (AP) Physics course.
Students were given the assignment about three weeks in advance so they could develop a plan outside of class. But on the day of the project, in late October, the students had about 45 to 50 minutes to build the chair and then they got a chance to test it out.
“They needed to do some research to see which type of structure can best support the weight,” Ms. Hood said. “The most successful design was the log cabin design … it supported a whole lot of weight.”
It’s a fun day in class, Ms. Hood said, but it’s teaching the students a kind of real-world application of physics.
“It’s learning how to balance the forces and how to build a structure that can distribute its mass around so that it can maintain the mass of the person sitting on it,” Ms. Hood said.
Students in the class seemed to enjoy the project — although admitted it was a challenge.
Beth Felix, a junior, said the chair had to hold a person for three and a half minutes.
“It was a little hard. I didn’t think it was going to work,” Miss Felix said, adding that her group did meet all the requirements.
Alex Maneo, a junior and foreign exchange student from Italy in Ms. Hood’s class, agreed that projects like that help make physics more fun.
“We have to think a lot about real life,” he said. “It’s not just thinking about … equations.”
Ms. Hood said students do a different project every six weeks and she is impressed with their ingenuity.
“The creativity that comes through when they do these projects is absolutely amazing,” she said. “They can come up with things I could never in my wildest dreams come up with.
“What I like is for them to express their creativity,” she said. “Book learning doesn’t allow for that creativity to come across. So, when they do these projects, they really get a feel for what science is really about, and I can really see the future scientists at work.”
