-Messenger file photo
Fair Oaks Middle School fifth-grader Hunter Niemand, center, tries to balance a text book on a pencil eraser as part of a lesson in Marsha Storbakken’s class about the balance of powers in government. Fellow student Tommy Halligan, left, watches. The experiment was tried again, much more successfully, with three students, who each held a pencil representing the three branches of the U.S. government.