There is a controversy in Mill Valley over a physics teacher who annually fires a gun into a piece of wood as a hands-on way to teach his students how to calculate the speed of a bullet.  For more than 10 years, teacher David Lapp has brought his M-1 Carbine rifle (leftover from Lapp’s days as a military police officer in the Korean War) to school to conduct one of his many unusual physics experiments.  Lapp has had the approval of his principal, but apparently the district was not aware of it.  Critics say that he is violating state law by bringing a gun to school. 

I’m a big supporter of gun rights, but I honestly don’t know if I’d want my kids’ teacher bringing his gun to school.  It’s not that I wouldn’t trust the former MPO teacher to be safe with the gun–I don’t trust the other kids.  But you have to admit that the teacher certainly goes out of his way to make his course material interesting to his students.  When he teaches about Newton‘s law of inertia, he lies on a bed of nails and allows students to break a cinder block on his chest with a sledge hammer.  If that doesn’t get kids interested in physics, nothing will!

Read the full story here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.