Jennifer Selinger – Head of Science

View from the Kleinlehrer Family Science Building

Every year for Science Week I think up a secret challenge that only I know about. The criteria are relatively simple: it must be something the teams can make in a lunchtime. It must involve planning, problem solving and making. It must be interesting enough to engage the contestants for the whole of lunch, including a Science Department team of and groups of students who range in age from about 10 to about 17. It needs to only require easy-to-source and extremely cheap materials. And since it happens in the playground amidst the chaos of lunchtime with only me supervising directly, it shouldn’t really allow for anything dangerous to happen. A tall order!

This year’s challenge was a variation on an old theme (I wasn’t feeling too creative last week). The participants had to create a device to get a tiddlywink into a cup. They were given the cup, the tiddlywink (apparently normal people call this a counter), 50 straws held together by an elastic band, a pair of scissors, some sticky tape and a plastic spoon. They were not allowed to hold either the tiddlywink or the cup. They got points for every 5cm the cup was suspended above the table and for every 10cm between the cup and the launcher and for every one of five attempts they got in the cup.

Seems straightforward, right? When I plan my challenge, I think up a solution as well, to make sure there is at least one way to do it. I envisaged the groups making little catapults with the spoon and hurling the tiddlywink into a cup somehow stuck above the table on a cradle or tower of straws. Simple.

Six groups started the challenge – about 40 students in all, and a team of five from the Science Department. Three groups made it to the end and one group only gave up at the last minute when their chosen structure proved impossible to construct in the time provided. And only one group (the Science Department) produced a catapult.

A student sidled up to me.

“We’re going to win,” he said. I raised my eyebrows questioningly. “We are going to put the cup at the Waxman Gate and the tiddlywink here at the K-block. We will get thousands of points for the distance and there you go!” When I finished laughing, I added a stipulation that to win, the tiddlywink had to get into the cup at least once. When I accused the group, all veterans of the Science Week Challenge, of cheating, they looked at me cheekily and said: “That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? To find the best way to get around the criteria?”.

I could only agree! I love that these students turn up every year and new students join, to find out how they can think their way into coming up with a creative and interesting way to circumvent the intention. Just so you know, one of the two successful student attempts involved sticking the cup up a wall and climbing on a pyramid made of team members to drop the tiddlywink in with the spoon – technically not touching the tiddlywink and gaining many points for height. They attempted to get more points for doing this on the third floor of the B-Block, but this was disallowed (I am the sole arbitrator and final judge).

The winning team ran a super-long straw from the same third floor to the ground at the base of K20. They fashioned a ring of straws, stuck the tiddlywink to it and allowed the ring to slide down the straws into the cup at the end. This didn’t get them any points for height (the cup was on the floor) but allowed them to be some way away horizontally and extremely accurate. 

I had a lot of fun watching the students struggle their way to a solution. I also got a huge kick out of seeing a hoard of tiny Primary students swarming around the teams asking eager questions and making enthusiastic suggestions as their bigger colleagues (and the staff) indulged them in their participation and smiled kindly on their excitement.

And that was only one of the five days of Science! I wish I had enough space to fully describe the squeals of joy and exuberant participation that accompanied the Science Show, or the look of glee on the students’ faces when they looked at the spinner they had created. Or the buzz and hum of the Trivia Quiz and the panting and jumping up and down of the students as they ran around in the Science Great Race. You will have to imagine it all for yourself.

All I can tell you is that the Science staff heaved a great sigh of relief when it was all successfully over,  Rochelle Hunter (our hard-working and much appreciated Lab Technician) had put away the last bottle and straw and the fun was over for another year. We collapsed in a heap and began to deal with the disaster area that we had produced on our desks…

… and Miranda McMahon, the teacher most responsible for the organisation of the week sent me an email: 

Hi Science,

I know I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but I thought this would be cute for next year’s Science Week Creativity Day.

Can you believe it? You’ll have to wait about 365 days to find out what it is that she already has planned!

Science-themed Shabbat

This year saw the first Science-themed Shabbat, in honour of Science Week. The students did a terrific job of integrating the two (my favourite were the Bunsen burner candlesticks). Below is the lovely “spiel”, as he put it, given by Josh Amoils. I wish I could provide the delivery as well, which was a delight! – Jenny Selinger, Head of Science

Do you hear that? That’s the sound of, that’s the sound of, curiosity. To be more specific I sense this general aura in the room, I feel it in my spleen. The reason why I feel it is because as humans we ask questions. And I mean a lot of questions, everyday 24/7, questions, questions over and over again. I ask myself questions all the time. Why is the sky blue? What is light? What is sound? What is movement? What is time? Where does a thought come from? Why is a smurf blue? Mum, what’s for dinner? Why is the alphabet in the order that it is? Why does a round pizza come in a square box? If a person is born deaf, what language do they think in? How can Darth Vader breathe and talk at the exact same time? When are these questions going to stop? Why is Samo always smiling? What if the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was actually a UFO and we are the aliens? What is existence anyway? Why would someone try to antagonise an entire religion by walking into a democratically elected Parliament wearing the very same holy clothing that they sort to ban in Australia? You see, we all ask questions, but how do we find the answers?

This is where science and Judaism come into our lives. Now a lot of people think that there is some inherent conflict between science and religion; that they are somehow opposites and that you can’t believe in the merits of one, without out denying the other. For example: a very popular issue that’s thrown around is that Darwin’s theory of evolution and Judaism’s story of creation contradict each other and only one must be ‘true’. Now logically this seems sound enough –if you add any 2 numbers together there is only 1 answer or you can’t be half pregnant, you can only be pregnant or not pregnant just like you can either believe in evolution or the opening words of Bereshit.

But, what if scientific theory and Jewish teachings actually answer different questions? What if the theory of evolution and the story of Creation don’t operate as binaries, but are explanations of 2 completely different questions. There would be no commonalities in their purpose and so you can’t compare the answers.

The definition of science is “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment”. So, science deals with the ‘hows’ of the world. How do plants grow? How can I measure the landmass on earth? How does length, cross-sectional area and temperature effect the electrical resistance of a wire? Science tells us that the earth is in the Goldilocks Zone. Just like the story of the three bears’ porridge, if the earth’s orbit was 1% closer or 1% farther from the sun, the earth would be too hot or too cold to sustain life. The earth is in that space which is ‘just right’ zone to allow us to live. Science recognises that our fundamental existence is only made possible by a very fragile alignment of natural variables and a very intricate design.

So, using science and logic, we can learn how things work, but science doesn’t answer all the questions. Unlike most animals, there is something to do with our brain that allows us to be highly aware of ourselves and ask the question “Why?”. Why is the earth suspended delicately in such a way that allows us to live? Why are we on earth with other people? Why is their existence?

Going back to its definition, scientific fact is found through observation and experimentation, but these questions can’t be answered through these methods. It would be like an ant trying to understand the forest in which it resides. We just can’t do it. This is where Judaism comes in. Judaism supplies meaning to the questions of life and creation that science can’t answer. Yes, we can understand how the Big Bang works, but why did it happen? Science also fails to explain what existed before the Big Bang. Judaism calls the perfect conditions that allow us to live ‘the miracle of creation’ and reasons that the ingenious, symbiotic design of the earth was the act of God, that it had a purpose. Judaism brings greater meaning to our everyday experience beyond worrying about our survival. Due to the miracle of creation, we have a responsibility to treat the earth in a certain way and we have a responsibility to treat each other by an ethical guideline.

So how do we answer the questions that we want to answer? How do we tame that curiosity that we all have? Well during this time of Science Week and Shabbat I think it’s important to acknowledge that science and Judaism both answer different aspects of the world and that we can use both to better understand our existence.
Joshua Amoils, Year 11