~Barbara Dinitz Levie
Anyone remember Rimantis Rudys? I’m not sure I’ve got the spelling right, but he was our Honors Physics teacher for senior year. The poor guy was recently arrived from Russia and really wanted to be tucked away at the U of C lab doing high level research, but for some unknown reason he got stuck with a bunch of kids who couldn’t resist pulling his chain. Even though we were mostly “good” kids, I think he was just too easy to intimidate. His accent was very thick so a lot of what he said was obscure to say the least. For me, most of physics was obscure, too (I have no idea how I got in that honors class anyways). We convinced Mr. Rudys that we needed to repeat that hilarious experiment where you touched the electrified ball and your hair flew up. We kept him going on the strobe machine for days. Rich Anderson and I did impromptu “silent movie” schtick while it was flashing away. We even wrote him song at the end of term: “Ohm, ohm on the range….” The day the principal stopped by and caught us really goofing off with toy electric trains (Doppler effect experiment, I think) put an end to our reign of terror. I wonder what ever happened to Mr. Rudys. He did not come back the next year.