Entering his second week as the Keables Chair holder for 2008, Dr. Scott Kim continued to work the magic he introduced last week. It's magic with a point. 

As he explained in a public lecture last Wednesday, his puzzles, ambigrams and games lead to much more than amazement and amusement. 

They have applications and open doors in language, mathematics, art, music, commercial game and puzzle design and even the creation of company logos. 

There is even a field of visual pyschology that deals with the representation of space and motion in human vision.

This week, Dr. Kim spoke to ninth and tenth graders on Tuesday and will meet the juniors and seniors on Thursday. As he did with the seventh and eighth graders on Monday, January 28, he revealed a heretofore unremarked pattern in 'Iolani's Alma Mater, closing with the invitation for students to think about the other patterns that lie hidden all around them.

On Monday, he addressed the mathematics teachers, showing them how to use games and puzzles to help students think mathematically in new ways. 

He brightened the eyes of the Design Science students and some lucky seventh graders as he showed how many things one can do with a simple loop of string.  Creating a star with it was but one of his wonders. 

So far Dr. Kim has conducted eight large sessions in Seto, open to everyone, given a public presentation on January 30, helped lower school students create a tangram dance and led the orchestras in a talk on Geometric Transformations and Music.

On Wednesday, February 6, he will visit the kindergarten class and then make the leap to AP Art Studio to talk about Elements of Design.

On Thursday, he speaks to an English class and a seventh grade art sequence class, and then wraps up everything on Friday with a chapel talk to fifth and sixth graders, a lecture to all the art students period 4 and a well-deserved celebration of his Keables tenure at 3:30 in the Headmaster's front yard. 

Those fortunate enough to have heard Prof. Cheryl Hayashi speak on Tuesday, February 5, about her passion for the patterns of spiders and their amazing silk, could not have helped but think how both Kim and Hayashi look for and make magic from the immediate world around them. 

Is there a lesson there for the students of 'Iolani? 

You bet.