By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Being eighth graders at Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School,  Rebecca Goodman, Hayley Schonland, Zoe Jurkowski have been taught all there is to know about preparing a proper cup of tea—Rube Goldberg style, that is!

Just ask them for the beverage, and one of them will roll a ball, which will hit a hammer, which will release a pulley, which will trigger a lever, which will hit an object.  Eventually a string that is attached to a tea bag will be cut, making the tea bag fall into a pot of hot water.  Meanwhile  sugar in another container will fall  into the cup as well.  And, for the piece de resistance, a pulley will pull the tea bag out of the water.

The girls study physics in a class taught by general science teacher Julie Reynolds, whose students for six years have been major forces in the Greater San Diego County Science Fair competition. Typically, 90 percent of the
                               
                                 Ye olde tea maker

projects done by her students will be chosen to advance from the school level to the county science fair level.  In two of her six  years, 100 percent of her students were advanced to the county science fair.  "I think the average is generally 10 percent from any particular school," she said. 

This year, three of Reynolds'  students—who also are participating  in the "Rube Goldberg" demonstrations which end tomorrow—will advance  from the county science fair to the state science fair compeition  next Monday and Tuesday in Los Angeles.

Rube Goldberg was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist who not only could draw biting commentaries on the issues of the day, but who also liked to design improbable machines to do simple tasks, such as the one created by Goodman, Schonland and Jurkowski. Among politicians and public administrators today, one occasionally will hear a policy or program attacked as a "Rube Goldberg"—that is, an option which is far more complicated than necessary.

For Reynolds' students, the idea was to learn about basic principles in physics in an enjoyable way.  Each team of students was required to devise mainly from recycled materials an invention with at least 12 steps.  Their instructions said: "You must invent a runway that allows a ball to drop one foot, rise six inches, travel a total of three feet horizontally, make a 360-degree turn, knock over a six- inch tall object, and complete a simple task."  Furthermore, the students were told that their inventions must include a lever, pulley, and an inclined plane," as well as their choice of other simple machines, such as a screw. "Electricity and magnets are optional, but may be used," the instructions said.  "You may touch the contraption only to initiate the action."

At a nearby work station, Daniel Dimont—one of the three State Science Fair entrants—teamed with David Bogopulsky, Ariel Halevy and Yosef Rosenberg on a machine that, after a variety of mechanical processes, ended up watering a plant.

Dimont narrated the process: 

A ball is placed on this hole, and as we push the plank of wood up, it is considered a lever, and the ball flows down.  Then the ball falls out of a hole in  the back of a plank and falls into a funnel.  It goes through the funnel.  Then it falls into a series of inclined planes; the inclined planes change directions until it falls into another trap, that makes the direction (become) forward into the rest of our project.  Then it hits a ... packet of oatmeal bars, and there is a wooden stick hanging out of the oatmeal bar,

                                                                                                                                Gardening for 'Rubes'

and that hits the edge of a (toy) hot wheels car.  The hot wheels car travels 3 or 4 inches on a little track on a ramp.  It hits a hot wheel launcher. The hot wheel launcher takes it through a 360-degree whip and it goes up the rest of the track and as it loses speed it will land directly into the pulley.  The pulley on the other side goes up and hits a ball that is on a little drill thing that is holding it together on a lever.  Then the ball goes down, and it travels and  hits another series of suspended tracks; it goes 1-2 and the direction changes.   The ball falls down, hits another hot wheels car onto another launcher. The hot wheels car goes, and hits a water bottle. The water bottle falls down, and the water goes down a ... box and right onto the plant, and waters the plant.

Seeing it is believing it!  And watching how the students gather around the inventions, cheering when the ball  makes it all the way through the complex course, testifies to how fully engaged they are in this learning exercise. 

Other student groups also had ingeniously impractical machines. Miriam Alpert, Lev Mizan, Jessica Silvers and Lisa Felber built one that could flip a coin—a decision-maker, in other words.  

Stefanie Bailund-Witty, Shir Hebron, Daniel Rajlevsky-Cohen, and Hannah Fechter devised one which, after the required steps including stair-climbing dominoes, made a hammer fall on an empty soda can, thereby crushing it for the recycling box.  

Josh Levi, Samantha Maisel, Miri Resnick-Levine, and Margalit Wollner invented a machine to blow out a candle.  
And, Max Gonzales, Eliran Placencia -Chomoshe and Zev Warhaft figured out how a machine could

    The Amazing Can Crusher                                                                             Genuine Candle-blower               

 be made to cut a piece of  fruit. How could any home be complete without such miraculous inventions? 
                                                                                                              
To get into the State Science Fair, Dimont "tested different types of water—bottled water, tap water, mineral water, all these types, and distilled water (which was his control), and he tested hardness, Ph, total dissolved solids and more, and he put them all through a Brita water filter, and looked how that affected the water," Reynolds said.  "Did it take out the chlorine?  Did it change the total dissolved solids?  Did it lower the hardness of the water?  He did some comparisons." 

Felber undertook a mathematical project, "looking at the probability of whether to hold or hit playing blackjack with a 16," the teacher chuckled.  "So she went through all the probabilities depending on what the dealer had, all of that—so that was her project, a very intense statistics project."

Silvers, an eighth-grader who was chosen for a special program to work with graduate students in a Scripps Research Institute's microbiology laboratory under Dr. Ben Cravatt, "tested bacterial levels on lettuce," Reynolds said. "There have been  stories in the news about a big outbreak in Minneapolis... from pre-washed bad lettuce. So she tested regular lettuce that you buy in the store, just out of the containers—how much bacteria does that have, just like that?  If you rinse at home, like you normally would?  She tested that. And then, she tested that against the bagged lettuce, pre-washed, if you don't wash at all.  She did find that the pre-washed had less bacteria but they all had some bacteria on them." 

Before joining the Soille staff six years ago, Reynolds, a University of Wisconsin graduate, was a substitute teacher in the San Diego Unified School District.  Her college degree was  in education for grades 1-9 with a minor in psychology.  "I wasn't a science major," she said.  "In fact, I hated science."  But as a student teacher, she worked under a "great" science teacher

                                                                                         Teacher Julie Reynolds and 'Harry Bones'

who "didn't use the textbook, just did all hands-on, and I really liked it, so then I chose for my actual full-time student teaching to be in a math-science 6th grade program in Madison, Wisconsin."

Somewhere, genes may have had something to do with Reynolds' amazing success as a science teacher.  Her father is an astrophysicist.

Not Jewish, Reynolds said working in an Orthodox Jewish school has imposed no restrictions whatsoever on the way she teaches science. For example, she said, she teaches the Theory of Evolution, utilizing generally accepted time-tables concerning  when the Earth was formed and animal species were differentiated, notwithstanding the fact that Torah provides a different time-table.  She said she explains that a "theory is something that can't be proven" but for which scientists have found various kinds of evidence.

Although Reynolds does teach anatomy, in fact, keeping "Harry Bones," the skeleton in her class, sex education is not in the secular curriculum.  Middle-school level boys and girls are taught those "facts of life" in separate classes in the Judaic Studies Department, where emphasis can be placed on derech eretz, appropriate behavior.