623: Miss Rheingold . . .
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 27 begins
27
MISS RHEINGOLD SAT on the edge of her desk, holding the general science book open in front of her. Her habit of sitting on her desk and crossing and recrossing her legs had led most of the boys in the class—including me—to sit throughout general science in a rubbery slump with our eyes at the level of Miss Rheingold’s desk top so that if she recrossed her legs carelessly we wouldn’t miss the opportunity for some important extracurricular education. The long-term effects of this posture are likely to show up as nagging back pain in our golden years, but at the time the possibilities seemed worth any risk.
“All right,” she said, “your assignment for last night was pages fifty-four through sixty-two in Chapter Three, ‘How Frogs Jump,’ and the sixty-four mimeographed sheets I gave you on the mathematical foundations of quantum theory. Do we need to go over that, or shall we move on?”
There was no response to this at all. We flipped the pages of our books, examined our pencils closely, and rustled our papers, trying to conceal our complete incomprehension. No one—certainly not I—dared even ask a question, the likelihood of asking something stupid was so great. Ah, but I was wrong. Matthew was willing to ask a question. He raised his hand.
“Matthew?” said Miss Rheingold.
“I’m a little uncertain about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,” he said, finishing with an urbane chuckle he had copied from a Cary Grant movie.
“Would anyone else like me to go over that?” asked Miss Rheingold. There was a great deal of throat-clearing, but no one was willing to admit—well, stupidity. “If not,” she said, “then perhaps you’d be willing to come in this afternoon, Matthew, and I’ll go over it with you then. It’s quiet here when the building is empty. We’ll be alone. We can really concentrate on your questions then.” There was in her eyes an eagerness that we had come to recognize, something puzzling, thrilling, and unsettling.
“Miss Rheingold?”
“Bill?”
“Maybe it might be a good idea if I came in for some help with that, too. It’s not that I don’t get it, you know, but I’m having some trouble pronouncing the names—”
“Me, too,” said Dave. “I could be free any afternoon this week.”
“Same here,” said Roscoe.
I had my hand up, but Miss Rheingold was already sliding off her desk and turning toward the green blackboard.
“Well,” she said, “since it seems that quite a few of you have questions, why don’t I go over it now.”
She wrote “Werner Heisenberg” on the board.
“Ow!” said Matthew. Dave Botsch had hit his ear with a rubber band shot at short range.
“Let’s imagine that we’re back in 1926,” said Miss Rheingold. “We’ve already got the quantum hypothesis, right?”
“Right,” I said. It seemed safe to do so, and I didn’t want her to think that I hadn’t done the homework.
“Okay, so along comes a German scientist, Werner Heisenberg. Let’s all say it: Vair-nair High-zen-bairg.”
“Vair-nair High-zen-bairg,” we said in unison, with the pleasant conviction that we were making progress.
[to be continued]
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