Music-hummed

N Quincy High raps to the beat of acceleration and inertia

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• Author: patriotledger

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It started out normally enough. The lights were low as background music hummed through the auditorium. Crew members, dressed in matching black T-shirts, sat in a row on the stage waiting for the show to start. Spectators wearing "VIP" tour tags around their necks chatted, occasionally stomping their feet as the time for the concert approached. As the performer got on stage, he riled the crowd: "Let's make some nooooooise!" Here's where things take a turn. For the next 45 minutes, hip-hop music with a twist of Sir Isaac Newton pumped through North Quincy High School, an entertaining -- and educational -- lesson for the city's fifth- and sixth-graders. "I thought it was going to be some boring science show, but this was really fun," said Cassidy Toldness, a sixth- grader at Sterling Middle School who got to ride in a dragster car in the show to demonstrate Newton's third law (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). "I thought it was cool," said fifth-grader Chris Buzzell from Lincoln-Hancock School. "I'd want to go again." That's what the folks from NASA and Honeywell International, the co-sponsors of the show, are hoping to hear. The two organizations began collaborating in 2004 to present a science education program -- and one that could show students science can be fun. Since 1985, there has been a 21 percent drop in people entering science, math and engineering courses. In the meantime, the demand for people to enter those careers has tripled. "How do you solve the problem?" asked Jason Nash, a performer and assistant house manager, before the show started. "We decided to get kids -- the future technology leaders." While the show has been presented to more than 140,000 students at 339 schools across the country, yesterday's performance was a first for the Boston area. The program made it to Quincy through the city's affiliation with Honeywell; the company was hired in the spring for an 18-month, $30 million project to upgrade utility equipment and modify city-owned buildings to save on energy costs. The show -- called FMA Live! for force = mass x acceleration, Newton's second law -- featured student and staff members in stunts ranging from Velcro walls to sumo wrestling to an assistant principal being pushed in a hover chair into a larger-than-life-size pie. A spoof of the VH1 show "Behind the Music" -- which they called "Behind the Motion" -- featured actors playing Newton and his college roommate, Chris Van Ertia (a play on "inertia," Newton's first law). Teachers were excited by the program, too. "I think it's great," said Mary Beth Mulcahy, a science teacher at Parker Middle School. "It was a different way of getting the lesson across to them." "We're going to study physical science later this year," said Nicoleta Bleskan, a science and math teacher at Lincoln-Hancock elementary school. "What a great way to plant the seeds." John Grasselli probably will never forget the lessons he learned -- he was picked to suit up and jump against the enormous yellow Velcro wall. "It was so cool when I was on the wall," he said afterward. "It was just really fun." Diana Schoberg may be reached at dschoberg@ledger.com.