Of Ding Dongs and Frogs

G&G takes a peek in other classrooms and finds more offbeat stories

AP CHEMISTRY STUDENTS GET TO TEACH

In mid-April 1990, Mr. Tom Shalla decided he wanted to judge the seven students in his Advanced Placement Chemistry class by more than just a few tests.

So he had each of the seven teach various aspects of chemistry, ranging from molecular bonding to thermodynamics.

This series of student-led presentations, which began on April 24 and ended on May 9, got off to a slow start. Ed Serzo's nuclear chemistry lecture didn't cover a whole lot of ground, and Mr. Shalla realized that each presentation could be done in one day, rather than two days as he originally planned. Jim Cannon's redox (short for reduction/oxidation) lecture wasn't much better. Craig Pattinson had the misfortune of having to cover complex chemistry, although at least he had an excuse to fall back on: This subject was the only one that Mr. Shalla had not previously covered.

Mark Rabinowitz was quick to volunteer to cover molecular bonding because he remembered Mr. Shalla covering it in Chemistry I, which he took two years before. Following his lecture, he started the "Valence Bond Quiz Championships" in an effort to find out how effectively he had taught the material. He would ask questions of his students, who would be matched up against each other, with two Ding Dongs serving as the prize for the final champion. In the best-of-five-question semifinal matches, Todd Rope beat Serzo while Pattinson shut out Lena Larsson; afterwards, Rope dispatched Pattinson in the best-of-seven championship matchup.

Rope and Dana Apfelblat were going to cover thermodynamics, with Apfelblat covering enthalpy and entropy and Rope doing free energy charge. What Mr. Shalla didn't realize was that Apfelblat should have gone first, because in order to explain free energy charge, you first have to cover enthalpy and entropy. Rope ended up covering all three, and in the process, Apfelblat's lecture on enthalpy and entropy was pretty much reduced to a retread.

Larsson finished with electrochemistry. Afterwards, Mr. Shalla had her give out some popsicles left over from Chemistry I class experiments that had taken place earlier in the day. Remarked Mr. Shalla, in reference to Rabinowitz's contest, "We're gonna give one to everybody, not just the winner."

FROG TRIALS RIVET MADAME ORLICH'S CLASS

Last year, Mrs. Pierette Orlich was missing one of her collection of frogs. In its place was a note demanding extra credit in exchange for the frog's safe return.

Since then, frog abuse has gone on the rise, and there have been not one, but two, "frog trials" in which French students tried to determine who absconded with a missing frog. These Kangaroo Court-type affairs have supplanted Mrs. Orlich's "Bucky Beaver" imitations as an annual tradition. This year, students have lined up frogs and made them appear as if they were "mooning" the class; hung them by the cords of TV sets anytime the class was scheduled to see a videotape; and played catch with them. So, future French students should expect to hear Madame say, "Ne lancez pas les grenouilles!"

(Editor's note: At the end of this article, as originally printed in 1990, I said, "These are two of the kind of stories that HHS students will submit to G&G this fall. G&G can't wait for gym class bloopers, either!" I mentioned "gym class bloopers" because we all like seeing sports bloopers on TV, so I imagined that in a future G&G issue, someone would write up some story about this softball blooper or that flag football blooper. In any case, G&G did not become a regular publication at Harrison High.)