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from the the-scientists-of-tomorrow-are-thwarted dept.
According to a petition at change.org
At first glance, Greg Schiller looks like a mad scientist taken straight out of a Hollywood film. His infamous moustache has more fans and followers than the dodgers on a good day. He coaches fencing and occasionally appears in school talent shows. Heck! Mr. Schiller is in fact anything but ordinary. He is teacher, role model and friend.
He is also suspended from teaching, coaching, and acting as union rep for his school.
Schiller was ordered to report daily to a district administrative office pending an investigation after two students turned in science-fair projects that were designed to shoot small projectiles.
One project used compressed air to propel a small object but it was not connected to a source of air pressure, so it could not have been fired. (In 2012, President Obama tried out a more powerful air-pressure device at a White House Science Fair that could launch a marshmallow 175 feet.)
Another project used the power from an AA battery to charge a tube surrounded by a coil. When the ninth-grader proposed it, Schiller told him to be more scientific, to construct and test different coils and to draw graphs and conduct additional analysis, said his parents, who also are Los Angeles teachers.
A school employee saw the air-pressure project and raised concerns about what looked to her like a weapon, according to the teachers union and supporters.
Shooting objects through tubes has a long tradition, and the idea of moving things with coils has been around a long time (I dimly recall articles about coast-to-coast coil trains from old mouldy Popular Science mags).
If you support freedom of scientific thought in our schools you might want to stop by change.org and sign the petition.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by rts008 on Friday April 11 2014, @09:10AM
No kidding!
*setting:circa 1968 science class, middle school*
Myself and two mates decided to build a hand held rocket launcher for Estes Model Rockets for our science project.
Our teacher replied that we needed to present a mechanical drawing, data on the proposed rocket and motor, and then he would decide.
We did the research, planned out a launcher, made the drawings, and presented it to him.
It was a go.
We built the thing, assembled the rocket and the teacher inspected it, and scheduled a 'launch date'.
On launch day, the whole class turned out to watch, and we had a successful launch.
Then came the 'write up' of the project...good stuff!
We would be Gitmo'd for even suggesting such a thing nowadays, or at least kicked out of school.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Friday April 11 2014, @11:13AM
I built a miniature USS Monitor out of aluminum, with functioning brass cannons. With permission and supervision I loaded them as blanks and demonstrated their firing for the class.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @11:42PM
Same for the teacher in the story.
What both of you did was "technology".
In the library, Science is in the 500s; what you were doing would be in the 600s (Technology aka Applied Science).
Science provides an answer to a scientific query by using the Scientific Method. [wikipedia.org]
Each has its place but the two often get confused, demonstrating yet again that most people have no clue what Science is (e.g. "Do you believe in evolution?").
-- gewg_