The original web designers

At a Girls Inc. program on science and math, kids master geometry by studying lairs of spiders.When Molly Pike was 7, she suffered a spider bite at her uncle’s barn in Kansas. The incident put her in the hospital -- and made her wary of spiders for years to come.

In recent weeks, however, Molly, 10, has learned to see spiders as artists as well as troublemakers. Operation SMART, a science and mathematics program at Girls Inc., is in the midst of a unit on insects and arachnids, and last Thursday’s lesson involved the intricate designs of spider webs. Using geometry, instructor Angela Hartwig showed how spiders form their homes out of acute angles and line segments.

“I like them now,” Molly said. “I like how they make their webs because it’s cool how they do all the details.”

“And I thought spiders were dumb,” added Chelsea Davis, 9, standing beside her in the backyard at Girls Inc.

The Operation SMART program -- the acronym stands for Science, Math and Relevant Technology -- has been a staple at Girls Inc. since 1985. The program inspires girls to do experiments in physics, chemistry, biology and computers -- fields that, Girls Inc. leaders say, are often stereotyped as male activities.

On Thursday, one group of girls did math problems in the computer room while a dozen others took a math lesson of a different kind. After reviewing a number of geometry terms -- acute, obtuse and right angles, line segments and rays -- Hartwig brought the girls out to the blacktop and had them create a spider web out of white yarn.

At first, the girls stood in a circle holding a single thread, but Hartwig set them in a pentagon and then added more pieces of string to fill the inside of the web. To show the intricacy of the design, the instructor gave the different threads names and asked the girls to point out acute and obtuse angles.

Teachers at Girls Inc. find their own ways to meld science and math, according to Veronica Escobedo, director of programs.

“There’s just the template, but they can add to it and be creative,” she said.

Other projects in Operation SMART have included building houses out of popsicle sticks, studying the physics of bridges and doing “scavenger hunts” to find information on the Internet. In one unit about safety, the girls were each given an egg and told to put special padding around it -- with foam, paper plates and other safeguards. Staff members then tossed the eggs off the roof to see if they survived the drop.

The unit taught the girls about the importance of balance in safety equipment, since the egg had to be centered to land in one piece.

“If you have the weight on top, it’ll flip around when you throw it,” said Brenna Barrios, 11.

The spider unit worked geometry into real-life situations, but it also offered a few pointers about spiders -- for example, that most of them have jaws too small to bite into human flesh. Of course, as Chelsea pointed out, sometimes arthropods are frightening anyway.

“There’s a staff member here who’s afraid of ladybugs,” she said. “I put one on her shoulder and she got scared.”

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education writer Michael Miller visits a campus in the Newport-Mesa area and writes about his experience.

20060110isuou2nc(LA) 20060110isuouhncPHOTOS BY MARK DUSTIN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Bianca Perez, 10, left, cracks a smile while looking at a spider web drawn by Paige Walter, also 10, during an exercise at Thursday afternoon’s Operation SMART program at Girls Inc. Below, Marissa Arzate, 11, holds onto strands of yarn to help create a mock spider web for a lesson on acute and obtuse angles.