Looking for a good book to read? Grab a copy of ‘Optics,’ which tells the tale of Timothy T. the physics prodigy and his sidekicks Earl and Pearl as they explore the world of mirrors, light, lenses, microscopes and telescopes. It was written last year by Richardson High School seniors. Yes, high school seniors wrote it, and yes, it’s all about physics - with a rather interesting twist: it caters to elementary students. But it’s likely to stimulate higher level scientific thinking from all age groups because it’s presented in a highly entertaining and enjoyable way and is illustrated with some very talented original art.

During the 2007/2008 school year, RHS AP Physics instructor Dr. George Hademenos gave his class the assignment of writing physics related short stories for upper elementary students. Dr. Hademenos says of the project entitled ‘So You Want To Be An Author,’ “One of the things I like to do as a teacher is to think outside the box. I don’t want to give my students standard, tailored projects. Instead, I like to involve other aspects of their educational experience. The premise behind my students writing science books was this: it’s one thing to learn something, but to totally understand it you have to be able to communicate it to a variety of audiences. The challenge was to learn the subject well enough to be able to relay and teach the concept to a child.”

RHS senior Julie McKinney, co-author of ‘Optics,’ and her classmates met the challenge and wrote fourteen 32-page children’s books that covered a variety of topics such as motion, energy, temperature, sound, electricity, and magnetism, to name a few. The books all have fully developed characters that children can relate to, and story lines that children can easily understand. The authors also had to come up with hands-on activities relating to each topic in each book that could be done at home using inexpensive readily available materials. Oh yes, and they also had to get their books published.