Keeping an Open Mind {Physics Class, Open}

[Grace R. Ride]

Professor Grace Resnik Ride put the last of the materials on the table at the front of the room and turned to look at the instructions that she had written on the plastic sheets for the projector, making sure that everything was in order for the day's exercise. Seeing that everything looked ready, she turned and wrote the title of the project on the whiteboard.

Physics: The Great Bridge-Building Challenge

"That ought to do it," she said to herself, looking down at the stack of papers in front of her. The rest of the instructions, which she had also copied onto projector sheets, were printed on these pages, ready to hand out to the students.

Physics: The Great Bridge-Building Challenge

Materials

One bunch of dry spaghetti
Elmer’s glue

The Challenge

Design and construct a bridge to span a 15-cm-wide canyon (the canyon is 100 cm deep, with vertical sides.)

Your bridge must:
• be at least 5 cm wide
• no longer than 30 cm.
• support a mass of at least 0.25 kg placed on the span of the bridge (equivalent to a force of about 0.5 lb.)

You may build more than one bridge if you like.

We will hold a competition: the winning bridge will be the one with the least mass that can support 0.25 kg on its span. In other words, the challenge is to build the lightest, strongest bridge you can.

The only construction materials you may use are dry spaghetti and white glue! You may use scissors, rulers, etc., as tools to work with, but they cannot be part of your finished bridge.

Design and build your bridge today. Leave it on back counter to dry (put it on wax paper so it doesn’t stick to the counter!) Be sure to identify which bridge is yours. The bridges will be tested in three days!

Now all Grace had to do was wait for the students. The bell rang and Grace heard a rush of activity in the hallway outside.

[Madeline Parker]

Physics, the science of making things do what she wanted. Okay, so that wasn't the true definition, but it was the one she favored most. Maddie loved it when things did her bidding. She liked it more when people did her bidding, but the satisfaction of making something that did what it was supposed to do was always something worth embracing. With a head for math and science, chances were down the line the young woman's pranking abilities would be applied to some sort of engineering field.

Twisting the handle to the physics lab, her messenger bag bounced against her hip as she entered. She took her favorite seat (second row aisle directly next to the window which she made to get in all of her classes) and plopped her bag gently on the ground. Pulling out a three subject notebook and purple inked pen, she was careful to not dislodge the her map of the school on accident; the last thing she needed was that little beauty falling into the wrong hands. Her calculator, ruler, and a few other potentially useful materials would remain in the bag as well until she knew if she'd need them or not. Then she sat back in her chair, hands folded on top of her notebook, and glanced around the room. Aside from the teacher, she was the only one there.

Maddie made it a point to be on time to her classes, often several minutes early to guarantee she got her preferred seat, but being first to a classroom always made her a bit uncomfortable. She disliked being alone in a room with a professor. It meant they could ask her questions while they waited for others to show up, personal questions she didn't necessarily want to answer. Interrogations, no matter how innocent they were, were not something she was fond of. So she fixed her eyes on the old overhead that Ms. Ride was apparently fond of and would not speak unless spoken to, mind wondering what other ancient technology she'd be bearing witness too and what sort of bridge project the board was talking about.

[Revan Ashkevron]

Revan pulled the door to the classroom walked in. She cast an uneasy glance at the only other student in the room at the moment and pulled her shields tight. She took her seat, first row, middle table, and set her bag next to the table. She pulled her materials out and set them in front of her, then looked up the board. Bridge-building challenge? Cool.

While she waited for the other students to arrive and for Professor Ride to call the class to order, Revan opened one of her notebooks and moved to continue a sketch that she was working on for Professor Zamorski. An image of a dragon was half-done and Revan's pencil moved lightly over the paper. She filled in the shadows on the wings and started the light that was going to come from the glowing stone on the tail. Pausing and looking at the paper, Revan decided that this was all she could do without the specialized art tools, and put the dragon away. She pulled out a paperback book and opened it to the marked place, deciding to spend the rest of the blank time reading. The book wasn't for any class, it was just a sci-fi story. Darth Bane: Rule of Two, by Drew Karpyshyn, it was the second in a trilogy, and one that Revan had read many times.