Last December, Beth Alberts spent hours collecting driftwood to
prepare for a lab class. In some ways, driftwood fits right in
at Beth’s school, Independence High School, a public high school
about 6 blocks from the glistening ocean in San Francisco’s
Outer Sunset neighborhood. In this lab, Beth challenged her
students to use their knowledge in gravity and balance to create
a driftwood mobile that didn’t wobble dramatically or tilt
drastically. They manually drilled steady holes through the
driftwood, carefully tying together string, wood, and a few
additional beads for balance. They went through multiple
iterations and lots of knots before accomplishing a perfectly
balanced mobile – and identified the center of gravity along the
way. In another lab, Beth’s students opened the heavy covers of
their science textbooks without using their hands. There were
string and pulleys everywhere, including a successful attempt at
linking the opening of a window to the opening of the textbook.
Beth notes that students are