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Dave Sanders

As high school sophomore Georgianna Ramos tentatively grasped the crystal with the tweezer, every eye in the room focused intently on the test tube.

“Now watch what happens,” said her teacher, Tom Sangiorgi, in a hushed voice as Georgianna dropped the crystal into the tube. As the solution inside began to crystallize, there was an audible “Oooooh” from the students.

“Feel it!” Sangiorgi exclaimed, quickly moving around the room and encouraging students to touch the warm tube. “What kind of reaction is that in terms of energy?”

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Dave Sanders

In Tom Sangiorgi’s chemistry class at Townsend Harris HS in Flushing, Queens, chemistry isn’t just something students learn — it’s something they experience.

“The classroom is his stage,” says Joel Heitman, who began his teaching career as a student teacher in Sangiorgi’s classroom and now teaches physics at Townsend Harris. “He makes science come alive.”

For his passionate and sometimes unorthodox teaching methods — one of his favorite lessons involves inviting students to pelt him with

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Dave Sanders

With his hair in a ponytail and a black T-shirt showcasing the periodic table of the elements, Sangiorgi epitomizes the image of the “cool” science teacher. But although he jokes around with students in a way that seems spontaneous, his lessons are carefully crafted to make even the most arcane scientific references seem relatable to students.

The test tube demonstration was part of a recent lesson on saturated solutions. He quickly segued from showing to explaining.

“How many oranges do you think you can hold?” he casually asked a student, inviting students to conjure up a mental image of their classmate clutching armfuls of fruit.

“Now imagine I stand you up against a wall and I instruct you not to breathe, and I stack four more oranges on your head and shoulders. Now you’re supersaturated with oranges. And then I poke you in the stomach!” he concluded enthusiastically. “What’s going to happen to all those oranges?”

Getting poked in the stomach while overloaded with oranges, Sangiorgi explained, was the equivalent of the reaction caused by adding an additional crystal to the supersaturated solution in the test tube.

It’s the kind of demonstration for which Sangiorgi, who’s taught at Townsend Harris for 10 years, is legendary among students and colleagues.

“From the first day I entered his classroom, I knew it was going to be an entirely new kind of learning environment,” says senior Alessandra Taboada, remembering how Sangiorgi kicked off her first day in chemistry class by setting a glass of water on fire.

“Demonstrations make everything more real,” says Sangiorgi. “They cater to visual learners and tactile learners instead of just ‘blah, blah, blah.’ And,” he adds with exaggerated wide eyes and a grin, “they’re also just fun!”

But Sangiorgi, who began his career as a blueprint draftsman who designed plumbing systems in high-rise buildings, takes his fun seriously. More than 20 years ago, while volunteering at a youth center as a counselor, he realized he wanted to make a difference by working with teenagers.

“I knew I couldn’t change the world, but I could make dents here and there,” he says.

Now, as the regional director for the city’s high school Science Olympiad — a rigorous science competition that involves intense preparation — Sangiorgi has become a mentor to his young students, several of whom describe him as “like a father figure.”

“He knows the right time to push us and when it’s time to step back,” says Taboada.

Sangiorgi modestly attributes his success as a teacher to his own mentors at Benjamin Cardozo HS in Bayside, where he was a student teacher, and John Adams HS in Ozone Park, where he spent the first nine years of his career.

“I’ve been fortunate in my career to be able to surround myself with people with a passion for teaching,” he says. “Most of what I do is because of the guidance of other teachers.”