On your mark, get set: Science!

Some of the best scientific experiments are the simplest. Think of Galileo dropping lead balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or Archimedes working out the principle of specific gravity while lounging in his bathtub.

The noble tradition lives on with Linda Paparella, a sixth-grade science teacher from Harlem's Opportunity Charter School in New York City. Ms. Paparella works frantically over a collection of orange halves, wires, metal plates, and a stopwatch. Next to Paparella, three other young teachers – Woody Smith, Chris Baker, and Saber Khan – fuss with their own bizarre concoction involving a watermelon, lemon cake batter, and an ammeter (a device that measures electric current). These four teachers, along with four others, are competing in front of an audience for the coveted title of "Iron Science Teacher." The teachers are given everyday objects and asked to create a science activity for students – in about 10 minutes.

The competition, held at San Francisco's Exploratorium and webcast at www.exploratorium.edu, is modeled on the Japanese cooking show, "Iron Chef." On "Iron Chef," culinary masters are given one ingredient that must be the centerpiece of an elaborate meal, quickly prepared. On "Iron Science Teacher," competitors are told the ingredient in advance so they can develop an activity, but once they're on stage, they have only 10 minutes to assemble and present their science lesson.

"Iron Science Teacher started as a joke," admits Linda Shore, informal host and director of the Teacher Institute at the Exploratorium science museum. "It was just a one-time thing, but it was so popular we've made it a regular program."

Last Friday afternoon, Ms. Shore tells contestants that preparation time is over as a crowd gathers expectantly around the stage. The museum has attracted the usual mix of parents, children, and summer camp groups. Shore announces this episode's special ingredient: "Fruit!"

Paparella is first up. She tells the audience a tongue-in-cheek story about needing to time her sixth-graders as they ran races, but her stopwatch battery died.

"Then I remembered that a battery is just a storage place for electrons," she says, "and fruit is just a sack of water with a bunch of stuff in it, and in that stuff are some free electrons."

Paparella explains how pieces of copper and zinc, connected to the orange halves by wires, create a flow of free electrons. Once the wires are hooked up to the stopwatch, calculator, or buzzer – Eureka! Power! The audience cheers.

Paparella has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "orange juice."

Next, children from the audience are enlisted to act out the roles of "grabby metal," "giving metal," and electrons, all holding a rope to represent the flow of electricity through the wires. To top off her show, Paparella hooks up her calculator to show the audience that it's possible "to do a square root with nothing but fruit."

Paparella is followed by the Smith-Baker-Khan team, two Californians and a Louisianian. They've concocted a lemon-cake-baking contraption using an electrical current jumping between two spoons powered by an electrical outlet hidden inside a hollowed-out watermelon. "We threw the watermelon in there just for the fun of it," Baker says.

As the team explains the principles behind electrical conduction, current, and voltage, the electricity flows between the two spoons stuck in the batter.

"It's smoking!" warns Shore.

"In Louisiana, if it's not smokin', it's not cookin'," retorts Baker.

The smokin' batter turns into lemon cake. Or partly into lemon cake. The mushy yellow mess would not pass muster on "Iron Chef," but on "Iron Science Teacher" it wins a round of applause.

" 'Iron Science Teacher' has become a very powerful way of showing that science is about simple materials and everyday things," Shore says. "It also shows the public that we have very talented science teachers out there."

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