What goes up must come down. That's usually the way it works, but what if what goes up is a pair of pink panties? A group of middle-school students wondered that exact question.
In an unusual science experiment, students at Jim Ryan Middle School in a suburban Lafayette town tested the theory of gravity. Their teacher, Greg Ogden, instructed the students to hurl their panties, which they collected from their mothers and sisters, into the air and see which ones landed the fastest.
The experiment created a lot of buzz locally, but when asked about the event just off school property by a reporter, Mr. Ogden was anything but reticent.
"Standardized testing is a joke. Teachers just teach the answers. I wanted my students to see gravity in motion, and I couldn't think of any better way than to have them toss their mothers' and sisters' panties into the air," Ogden said.
Ogden said the experiment served a dual purpose. The students, he said, did not just learn about gravity, but also about density.
"What was great for students to see was that the larger the panties were, the fatter their mothers and sisters are, the faster the respective panties fell," Ogden said.
The middle school's community did not seem irked after the local media had a field day with the topic. Regina Throughbourd, an 83 year-old neighbor of the school, said she watched with a smile as the students hurled their pink panties into the air. She said she loved to see children learning and having fun at the same time.
"The only thing I don't understand," Throughbourd said, "is why the panties had to be pink."
--jla