Is by Derek Webb Page A

over the side.
    â€˜Who would like to try to lift the brick now?’ Nobody, it seemed.
    â€˜Right, Ryder, up you come.’
    â€˜Oh, Sir…’
    â€˜Up you come.’
    Kevin Ryder got heavily out of his seat and shuffled towards the front of the class.
    Really, with the three of them all there together, Mr Phillips, Kevin Ryder and the brick, I found it difficult deciding which was the most intelligent. Eventually I came down on the side of the brick. It was definitely the one with most personality.
    But, surprisingly, Kevin’s demonstration was very convincing. He lifted the strand of cotton and gently pulled on it. To our amazement, the brick lifted up in the water.
    Mr Phillips smiled again. ‘Thank you, Kevin.’
    Kevin Ryder swanked all the way back to his seat with a broad grin on his face. It must have been the first time that he had actually managed to do something right. Still, we didn’t begrudge him his moment of glory. He’d made Trevor Smart look pretty silly after all. Although Mr Phillips obviously had a lot to do with that too.
    â€˜Now, who knows why that happened?’ he asked. ‘Have any of you any idea why Trevor was unable to lift the brick without the cotton breaking, yet Kevin managed to?’
    â€˜Sheer brilliance?’ suggested Emily Ford, who had a bit of a crush on Kevin. She also needed glasses.
    â€˜Unlikely,’ replied Mr Phillips, which was a rather kinder remark than usual for him. ‘The reason why it was easier in the water is because the water was helping to lift it too.’
    He demonstrated lifting the brick again as if waiting for a round of applause. We didn’t oblige.
    â€˜You see? What’s happening is that the water is exerting what we call an upward thrust on the brick, trying to lift it. And what’s amazing…’
    (…is that I’m still awake, I thought.)
    â€˜â€¦ is that the upward thrust is equal to the weight of the water that the brick has displaced. Isn’t that incredible?’
    â€˜Incredible’ certainly wasn’t the word I’d have used.
    But Mr Phillips was in his element. ‘This principle was first discovered by a Greek mathematician called Archimedes who lived thousands of years ago. He discovered it while having a bath one day. He noticed the way that the water rose when he got in and then worked the rest out in his mind.’
    None of us, it seemed, had the faintest idea what Mr Phillips was rabbiting on about.
    â€˜He was so excited he ran straight out of the house into the street, without any clothes on, yelling “Eureka!” “Eureka” means “I’ve found it!”’
    We perked up a bit at that.
    â€˜I bet he had!’ smirked Kevin and some of the girls started giggling.
    â€˜Thank you, Kevin,’ Mr Phillips said as reproachfully as he could. ‘The point is you can see now why you were able to lift the brick and Trevor wasn’t, can’t you?’
    If Kevin could see, he wasn’t letting on. So Mr Phillips turned his attention to Jamie.
    â€˜And you, Johnson, what do you make of it, eh?’ Jamie gave a blank look in response.
    â€˜Well,’ Mr Phillips continued, with a big grin on his face, ‘I should try it if I were you Jamie. You could make a major scientific discovery lying in your bath! Who knows, you might even discover soap!’
    There was a sort of wheezy sound like an old donkey braying. It was Mr Phillips laughing at his own joke while his bald head bobbed about under the glare from the spotlight.
    Still laughing he carried on. ‘And this of course is the reason why boats float. After all, metal doesn’t naturally float does it? I mean, if you put a bar of metal in a bowl of water it’ll sink, won’t it? But, make it into a boat shape, and it doesn’t. That’s because there’s an upward thrust lifting it, equal to the weight of the water the boat has