Good heavens, Miss Yakamoto, you're beautiful

Guess you have to blame my being an English major for this. Science interests me but I've never had the patience necessary to be an effective scientist. I ended up scuffling through my required science classes in college, precisely because they all required a weekly three-hour laboratory session that usually felt like the equivalent of taking four Benadryl capsules. I always had "other priorities," as Dick Cheney might say.

When it's time to help your kids with their Science Fair projects, you can't let them know that those are your views, though. Both Ben and Maria recently entered exhibits in the Valentine Hills Science Fair. Ben, as a fifth grader, was required to participate, while Maria, as a first grader, had no such obligation. But Maria is nothing if not competitive, especially in the sibling rivalry game. She has entered cars in the last two Pinewood Derby events for Ben's Cub Scout troop and she there was never any doubt that she would want to enter an exhibit as well.

Ben took his obligation the way many eleven year old boys take it, with equal mixtures of excitement and scorn. He very much liked the idea of competing, but wasn't particularly interested in doing a lot of work on the project. So there we were, the night before the contest, holding a professional display board, a flashlight, a piece of wax paper, a camera, a library book with information on the solar system, and a young scientist with a sullen attitude. What to do?

We had a plan. Ben had previously discovered an experiment where you could recreate the effect of sunlight on the planet Venus by shining a flashlight through a piece of wax paper. I had Ben do that, taking his picture while he did it. The pictures we took are simply a hoot; Ben holds the wax paper with great disdain, as if it were a dead muskrat. We then took a picture of Ben holding his library book open to the pages about Venus. Then we did some marketing.

We went down to the ancient computer in the basement and began detailing our efforts, comparing what we saw with what happens to the sun's rays as they hit Venus. Then we noted that, per the book, Venus's atmosphere contains a great deal of carbon dioxide, which causes a greehouse effect that dwarfs the comparable effect on earth. In fact, the temperature on the Venusian surface is hotter than on Mercury. We then made a politically correct point that more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere would make things hotter, too. Bingo - mother lode. We printed it up the results, got the pictures developed quickly and pasted the thing together. And Ben got a healthy B+.

What does this tell you? A few things, actually, and not all of them positive:

1. Telling people what they want to hear is always a popular choice;
2. Sometimes the best work gets done when your back is against the wall;
3. There can be a pretty big difference between the lessons you are taught and the lessons you ultimately learn; and
4. Just because something appears on a project board does not guarantee intellectual rigor.

I'm guessing that Ben will approach science the way I did, i.e., only when absolutely necessary.

Meanwhile, Maria's project turned out to be a way for her to do her favorite thing, drawing. Her topic was "What Makes a Bird a Bird." So Maria patiently explained that birds have common features (feathers, beaks, warm blood, a skeletal system with a backbone and eggs that hatch). She then drew pictures of penguins, bats and bees and used them as illustrations. It was pretty good for a first grade project and she had fun.

The only bummer is that the huge snowstrom, a/k/a SNOWMAGEDDON'S BAD *** COUSIN, wiped out the opportunity for other students and parents to see the masterpieces coming out of our laboratory. But we'll remember it well. We've also learned that professional display boards are excellent for fort-building and hide-and-go-seek games. Again, the lessons you are taught are not always the lessons you ultimately learn.