In a chaotic middle-school science class full of scavenged tires, rusty bicycles, old baby strollers, scuffed hospital bed wheels and a zillion other foraged doodads, science teacher Byron Woodside and his students spin the ultimate creations. Hot rods and outlandish bikes. Tiny motorcycle models. A giant chopper. Even a tractor-to-be.

The clutter is heaven to the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at Stevenson Middle School, who are living, breathing and speaking the language of creation.

"We're trying to figure out how to make a hot rod," says Leiloalani Contemplo, a 12-year-old eighth-grader, standing over a sleek, partially completed vehicle created from old vacuum-cleaner parts, a chipped plastic lamp base and strips of scavenged wood.

Woodside grabs up a hunk of gray plastic in triumph: "Tell me this isn't just like a '56 Ford F100 fender," he says, sweeping it into the air.

Meanwhile, Anuhea Kaneali'i and Zoe Young, both 12, hold a hunk of a bicycle against the giant chopper wheel mechanism as Steven Tran and Chaney Kohashi, both 13, fiddle with the chopper's rear wheelbase.

"It was extra credit if we rode it," says Young of a similar but smaller project last year.

This is science at its best — learning through doing, with projects based on the middle-school standards of discovering, inventing and investigating.

Woodside's class is called exploratory science and he specializes in challenging students' innate curiosity. Youngsters from past years have gone on to become architects and engineers, or set their sights on master's and doctoral degrees.

But he hastens to say that any of the vehicles built and then driven by students on campus are "low-speed, high-torque" — nothing that's going to put anyone in danger. Once principal Burton Amine knew safety was uppermost, he let Woodside fly.

HOOKED ON HARDWARE

Department of Education science resource teacher Alison Inouye says the elective science "wheel" course Woodside teaches gives him the latitude to experiment. "He's focusing on the process part of science — the thinking skills — and that's good," Inouye says. "It's a good way to get kids extended into inquiry and investigation."

Woodside believes that especially for students who aren't native English speakers, hands-on projects may be far more effective than all the money in the world aimed at academic tutoring.

"You immediately put a tape-measure in their hand and say, 'Guys, can you help us?'" he says. "When people hook into something they like, they become willing to write, to do math."

The kids who flock to his classes call him "Mister" and are obviously fond of this rumple-haired teacher with the cool ideas. And Woodside is quick to praise, calling one a great designer, another an amazing artist.

The artist is 12-year-old seventh-grader Blayze Tiposo, who has latched onto a length of black leather the class cut from an old couch found at a nearby Dumpster, and is designing custom saddlebags for the chopper after getting the idea from a magazine.

Woodside fervently believes in teaching math, physics, engineering, even writing, through assembling gears and figuring out a chassis and stabilizing wheels. Right and wrong don't matter much in that context; what the child invents to solve a problem is what's important.

THE CUTTING EDGE

In the next class, Mua Kapanui-Sula, an 11-year-old seventh-grader, is wielding a giant pair of bolt-cutters to remove a hunk of metal pipe that throws off the alignment of the wheelbase for the chopper he's creating.

Titus Salter, 12, is helping, discovering a way to wiggle off the offending piece after Mua has hacked at it.

"We're working on motorized choppers," says Kapanui-Sula. "But we never have all the pieces."

Woodside nods as seventh-grader Gloria Miah, 12, asks for steel rods. He tells the students he'll bring those things from home next day.

"It's 'scratch' building because we don't have much money," says Woodside, who scrounges materials everywhere. His classes are popular — even with students who didn't sign up. Often they linger by the door and are invited to join in.

Sixth-grader Josh Morrisroe, 10, was so curious about the teacher's own project notebook — Woodside points out that inventor Thomas Edison kept a design notebook — the youngster began pouring information into his own and now loves it.

SCROUNGE AND SHARE

Seventh-grader Nainoa Kekipi-Santos walks forward with a blue plastic bag filled with precious hunks of copper tubing he found at his apartment building and brought to class. The kids and Woodside fall on the bag with delight, trying pieces this way and that as Nainoa's eyes shine.

Woodside has been teaching for 21 years, but never planned it that way. A welder by training, he was going to follow the footsteps of his grandfather, Walter Byron Woodside, who ran Island Welding during the war years, but the younger Woodside wasn't much of a businessman. So his calling became turning students on to science.

"Each school complex should have a couple of Matson containers where the public can bring stuff and then we can work with it," Woodside says. "And I'd like to see three rooms like this with kid-friendly work stations with vises and wrenches and stuff," he says of his own cluttered space.

He gets dreamy for a minute.

"Next year we'll tow an electromagnet behind a tractor and shoot lasers off it and fly a kite. And maybe Mr. Cogbill (Malcolm Cogbill, another science teacher) will launch a rocket."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.