Monday morning was an unusual one for students at Baltimore County?s Deep Creek Middle School: They traded lectures and pop quizzes to watch two teachers sumo wrestle and a classmate heave himself into a Velcro wall.
And that was before County Executive Jim Smith took a ride in a hover chair and propelled into a giant cream pie.
“This is fun!” said Jordan Canada, the eighth-grader who became a human Velcro strip. “We?re learning about science and it?s cool!”
Baltimore was among 30 stops across the U.S. and Canada for a traveling hip-hop science concert that teaches Isaac Newton?s three laws of motion and the universal law of gravity. A collaboration between the Honeywell manufacturing firm and NASA, the show ? called FMA Live! for the law of force equals mass times acceleration ? will reach 14,000 students, including those Monday at Deep Creek and Dundalk middle schools, according to event organizers.
They said the point is to encourage minority students to get excited about science, and hopefully inspire them to pursue science, math and engineering careers.
“We had focus groups with students and teachers, and we asked them what we could do to make this memorable and compelling,” Honeywell spokesman Jim O?Leary said. “We?ve had such a positive response, the list has grown and grown.”
So popular, in fact, O?Leary said 300 schools are on a tour wait list. Students are drawn into the world of science through professional actors who rap, break dance and demonstrate the concept of inertia with the Velcro wall, he said.
Two students who drove go-carts across the station demonstrated action and reaction, while the wrestling and an enormous soccer ball show that force is determined by mass multiplied by acceleration and the hover chair demonstrates all three laws.
