She’s blonde, brainy and bespeckled, but forget the lab coat. This scientist comes with stilettos.
The first lesson taught to high school students in the U.S. Virgin Islands by Deborah Berebichez, "the Science Babe," is physics – the physics of high heels. She pulls out an unlikely pair, with the steel colored heel protruding backwards from the sole along the ground and the heel suspended in mid air.
The lesson is weight per square foot. The question is which produces a greater force, an elephant or a woman in heels. And how high can those high heels rise before they tip the wearer over?
The answer is the woman. Though smaller than the elephant, her weight is balanced, in part, on a heel that’s a quarter inch square.
Berebichez calls it the Science of Everyday Life. In her role as the Science Babe, she calls herself a passionate science communicator. She’s part of an increasingly popular trend towards science entertainment.
From the Discovery Channel’s "MythBusters" show to the proliferation of science cafes across the U.S. mainland, efforts are being made to make science cool. Berebichez, the first Mexican woman to receive a doctorate in physics from Stanford University, uses a more direct approach by making personal appearances as a celebrity scientist.
Berebichez is a research scholar at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at New York University. She’s also a post-doctoral researcer at the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at Columbia University. But that’s her "mild-manered alter ego." On the web and on the lecture circuit, she’s the Science Babe. And it may soon be on TV, as well. She may soon shoot some appearances on National Geographic TV.
The Science Babe uses her 5-foot, 6-inch blonde good looks as a way of making her subject approachable. She says she gauged the success of her approach in the V.I. by the gleam in students’ eyes.
“My whole life I have worked to polish my skills to explain things to kids," she said Friday after completing a three-day tour of schools on St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John. “If I cannot ignite a spark in their eyes with what I’m saying and you feel their response that means I am not doing a good job. It’s never their fault.”
It’s something she’s done in North and Central America, across Europe and in the Caribbean. If children aren’t excited by their math and science lessons, she said, the fault lies in the presentation.
Even with the youngest group of students – eighth graders at the Julius E. Sprauve School – the physics of high heels helped ignite a spark, she said. Having engaged her audience, Berebichez said she was able to guide them through more complicated concepts.
V.I. students are smart, she said, and very polite. She couldn’t imagine going into a school in New York City and having someone offer to carry her bags. The eighth graders at Sprauve School shared their hopes and aspirations. One boy impressed her with the kinds of questions he asked after the high heeled physics lesson.
“He’s smarter than his teacher. It’s scary,” she said.
It’s the kind of remark that plays well with science teacher Ann Marie Gibbs from the St. Croix Educational Complex. She proudly points to the Annual Yearly Performance measure of science education at her school as proof of her student’s ability.
“Standardized tests show Complex students, our kids, have been meeting those targets,” she said. “The staff and the school work cohesively and continually to improve the standards and raise the bar for students in their learning curve.”
Gibbs, who teaches science for grades 10 through 12, felt her students were ready to meet the Science Babe.
“Our kids were totally captivated. Sometimes in assembly the students get rowdy but they were very attentive. She was very impressed by the questions the kids asked. She gave very practical applications of how physics can be used in life. They left surprised and enlightened by the things she had to say,” the science teacher said.
Over the course of three days in the Virgin Islands the Science Babe connected with students at St. Croix’s Educational Complex and Central High School, Charlotte Amalie and the Ivanna Eudora Kean High Schools on St. Thomas, and at Sprauve School on St. John. Her appearances were arranged by Nick Drayton, program coordinator of VI-EPSCoR at the University of the Virgin Islands.
VI-EPSCoR – the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research – has been in the Virgin Islands since 2005. One of its goals is to get more Virgin Islanders to view science and technology as valid career choices and build a “science pipeline” from grade school through graduate school.
“VI-EPSCoR is very pleased to be opening these windows to students, giving them opportunities to connect directly with science luminaries and in some cases to be mentored by them,” said Drayton.
Berebichez offered the students both a science lesson and a life lesson, Drayton said.
“She is the classic example of how individuals can succeed in science and technology despite disadvantages and cultural expectations.”
To hear it in her words, there is nothing in her background that would have led anyone to believe she would end up studying sound-wave propagation. That study led to the invention of a machine that may someday allow two people watching television to view different programs at the same time. It could also be used to help UN delegates to hear simultaneous translations of an address wirelessly in their own languages.
Born as the daughter of a Mexican high school dropout, Berebichez said she struggled against a drumbeat from family, teachers and the media saying a girl should not study science.
“When I tell the kids my story, they often think, ‘She was probably very supported by her family. She was talented in math or she was very wealthy.’ No. I had to fight for a scholarship. I had to fight against my family and my peers telling me that I couldn’t do it,” she said.
But she met a man from India who tutored and mentored her. “He was really the first person who said, ‘you have talent, of course you can do it.’”
Her tutor refused payment. Instead he asked her to help somebody else the way he had helped her.
