Launching a lifetime interest in science

From Inwood to space and back, 18 fifth, sixth and seventh graders from Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island (YKLI) on Doughty Boulevard conceived and assembled an experiment that was taken aboard the final space shuttle mission.

Featuring the sophisticated title “Deposition and Formation of Zinc Phosphate Crystals in Microgravity,” the experiment compares the growth of crystals in space with those grown on earth and which would grow stronger with less imperfections.

Practical applications for this experiment are multiple for zinc phosphate is one of the oldest and most used dental cements to industries that need anti-corrosion coatings such as the military, automotive and aerospace.

“We had to submit three working experiments, the students wrote the proposals,” said Stew Greenberg, who functioned as one of the coordinators for this project that is run under the sponsorship of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP). YKLI was one of 11 selected out of hundreds of national submissions and the only one from New York State.

“It is cool science and practical,” said Greenberg, who also serves as the school’s IT consultant through his Cedarhurst-based business Rush Hour Solutions. “It will inspire them to greatness and to learn. It is big for their development and they matured educationally.”

The vested interest was paternal as one of the students involved is Greenberg’s son Avi Greenberg, who along with his fifth going into sixth grade schoolmates, Rafi Levine and Ami Birnbaum discussed the experience of not only helping to create this experiment, but seeing Atlantis, the last shuttle, take off.

Wearing their yellow YKLI space shuttle trip polo shirts, the three students sat around a laboratory table in the classroom that boasts science equipment donated by the Gruss Foundation that provides funding for Jewish schools throughout Long Island, New York City and Westchester.