Giving the gift of ingenuity

Why spend $100 on department store toys when you can give a child the gift of ingenuity? That is what Huntington Beach resident Werner Nolff would tell parents who shopped for their kid’s holiday goodies.

Nolff, 73, is a retired engineer who has volunteered at Circle View Elementary School for more than six years, helping students master the laws of physics. Last month he watched as Jessica Haag’s fourth-graders got medieval on the playground, testing catapults they built in class.

“A good catapult will get you about 35 feet,” Nolff said.

With his help this year, the class has built telegraph machines and rockets from two-liter soda bottles. By the end of the year, students will build an electric car and a very basic computer from a peg board and battery-connected wires.

“To me, it comes easy,” Nolff said. “I am pretty handy so I can pass it on to those kids. It relaxes me.”

Students were paired up for the project, which they worked on an hour at a time for about four days a week for four weeks. Teams constructed their catapults from kits purchased from the Future Engineers and Scientists of America, for which Nolff is a volunteer.

“They have to figure out a way to launch the catapult and construct it,” Haag said. “We don’t tell them how.”

After the rubber-band powered catapults were built, the students took their contraptions out to the blacktop for a little launch practice. Shooting whiffle balls added an extra challenge to the task, because air passes through the holes so the balls won’t travel as fast or as far, Haag said. Some whiffles reached distances of more than 30 feet.

During the firing practice, adjustments were made moving links up or down on the release chain, or moving a notch up or down on the catapult arm. It’s distance — not height — that matters in this competition.

The kids have really taken to Nolff like a second grandfather, Haag said.

“They respond to him,” she said. “You can ask him any math or science question and he will have an answer.”

Other teachers have noticed Nolff’s effectiveness with students. Maureen Spillers, a fifth-grade teacher who has worked with Nolff in the past, said it works because “he tells them how it is.”

“He doesn’t baby them or treat them like kids,” she said. “He motivates and challenges them.”

“He knows how to connect things,” said Jackie Schiffner, 10, of Huntington Beach. “I think he’s nice because he spends all his time helping us.”

Nolff will not do the work for you, but he will give students tips on how to improve their shot — after they try it out on their own.

“Hold the base down with your foot,” or “screw the hook all the way into the base,” Nolff said as he paced behind the groups assembled along a white line painted on the playground.

Then, snap, another shot went off into the distance, this one reaching the third line for a distance of about 30 feet.

“They got much more [distance] than the last class yesterday,” Nolff said.

According to Nolff, the girls typically whip the boys, since they pay more attention in class. They do not mess around, he said.

For the boys it takes a little bit more to get their attention.

“We talk about physics and I tell them about the history,” Nolff said. Hundreds of years ago, “they used to catapult dead animals into the castles to spread disease. You tell the kids that and their eyes and ears open up.”

Some youngsters quickly take to the concepts, while others “you give a screwdriver and they say ‘what end should I use,’ ” Nolff said.

But for the most part, both Haag and Nolff leave the students to their own devices, tooling away at their projects and hoping to launch the farthest shot to win first place.