Editorial: Gravitational waves and suburban classrooms' math challenge

There is in society a certain attitude toward mathematics not unlike that of children toward food that is good for them. So, a new math curriculum may well recall the surprise of young boys discovering their brother Mikey's now-famous fondness for Life cereal. "He likes it! Hey, Mikey,"

Will students like math after they complete the LearnStorm challenge being undertaken at schools throughout the suburbs and Chicago? Maybe.

The early indications - mostly anecdotal, it must be noted - are promising. Fenton High School algebra teacher Peter Carzoli told our Madhu Krishnamurthy the new online-based system has kept his students "engaged from the time the bell rings until the time the class is over." Meagan Stass, a seventh-grade math teacher at Barrington Middle School, says her students "are so pumped."

The secret appears to be a unique blend of online learning and rewards that recognize trying hard alongside the rewards for succeeding. Whatever the case, it's hard not to contemplate the value of all this trying in the context of scientists' announcement Thursday that they've recorded for the first time proof of ripples in gravity that Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of relativity. To consider the stories side by side - the joy of learning math and the excitement of a monumental scientific discovery - is to reflect on an oat seed and Mikey's bowl of cereal. They look nothing like each other, but are intrinsically linked.

Not that trying to comprehend the nature of gravitational waves is an exercise for the faint of heart. It engages a vocabulary - black holes, event horizons, neutron stars, pulsars, cosmic microwaves, the space-time continuum - that can reel the mind faster than a quadratic equation. But it does summon an appreciation for possibility. What a hopeful pleasure to imagine some of those Fenton High School or Barrington Middle School students one day transforming their discovered joy in mathematics into some profound observation about our universe.

Knowledge, we know, is power. And our constant quest for knowledge can take us into realms that are not just good for us but also surprisingly exhilarating.

Not unlike, perhaps, those final sentences in scientist Arthur C. Clarke's classic novel "2001: A Space Odyssey" describing an astronaut who has transformed into an infinitely more advanced being: "For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something."

What's not to like about that?