That Thing We Do

From elementary school I remember a science experiment where each student was given a stiff piece of hefty construction paper. Carefully, the teacher poured out onto each sheet of paper a handful of tiny metal filings. They were iron shavings actually, that I remember looked like what lined the sink after my father trimmed his sideburns.

Our teacher then gave each of us a magnet to pass beneath the paper. Of course, those filings moved and danced, scattered and piled up. There was even this little game, still being produced today, called “Wooly Willy” that worked the same way.

“Wooly Willy” was anything but; he had a blank face and bald head. But with a “magic wand” – a piece of plastic with a magnet glued to the end – you could move iron shavings around to give him a beard, mustache, eyebrows, or a coif of thick, wooly hair.