ON BREAK:Students get their just desserts

On the second-to-last day of summer school in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, chemistry teacher Don Ryan gave his students a treat before their final exam: He let them eat ice cream outside on the blacktop.

Ironically, it might have helped them to pass the test.

During Newport-Mesa’s second summer session, Ryan’s students crammed down scientific knowledge like never before, finishing 22 labs in 23 days. On Wednesday, the class took an hour outside to create and enjoy ice cream — and the terms “colloid” and “freezing-point depression” were close at hand.

“I try to make it fun, because six-and-a-half hours in a classroom is a long time to sit,” said Ryan, who has taught summer school for nearly a decade.

A crash course, then, for those who wonder what really goes on at Baskin-Robbins: To make ice cream from scratch, take a small plastic bag and fill it with milk, sugar and vanilla or any other flavored syrup. Put the small bag in a larger bag filled with ice and salt, and begin kneading the two together.

Within a few minutes, the salt will melt the ice — but since salt lowers the freezing point of water, the ice will remain just as cold when it turns into liquid. At the same time, the mixture inside the smaller bag begins to harden, and before long, it’s time to break out the plastic spoons.

It wasn’t the first time that Ryan had tied food into a lab this summer. The chemistry class — held, like all Newport-Mesa summer courses, at Costa Mesa High School, but including students from around the district — also had participants making popcorn to study how the hot water in kernels caused them to explode. Other projects featured different household items: In one lab, the students flipped pennies to study the half-lives of organisms, while another used a Geiger counter to count alpha and beta particles in materials.

The class came to a head on Thursday with a final exam covering 10 chapters. With hours of study ahead, the students welcomed their diversion outside.

“It’s not like the hard stuff you get out of the carton, but it’s harder than soft serve,” said Jessica Milner, a senior at Corona del Mar High School. “You have to make sure the ingredients are in place so it isn’t too milky or vanilla-y.”

Behnaz Babaknia, also a Corona del Mar senior, brought a banana to the mixing table outside.

“I just randomly brought it,” she said. “I might make a banana split or something.”