My Science Project
copyright2001 Dale Hansen no reproduction without permission
or How I destroyed a small village
During the spring months of the sixth grade, when I was nearly through the year and out of Sunnyside elementary, my school had a science fair.
Major universities were not about to beat a path to the school, waving scholarships in the air for our projects and there was no cash reward for winners. Participation in the fair was unanimous by all members of the fifth and sixth grades, by virtue of the faculty threatening to fail us all if we didn’t enter a project.
No muse could have provided greater inspiration than this.
The classroom was not really my comfort zone, nor was I in anyway athletic or “outdoorsy”. I wanted to be a bookworm, so to that end, I was a permenent feature of our school’s library as much as any shelf, card catalog or magazine rack.
it was here I found some wonderful ideas for my project, the benefit being they were already written out with easy to follow instructions. I found one in particular that really spurred my imagination.
Selling the idea of a working model of an active volcano to my parents, especially my mother who would have to clean up afterward, would have required a declaration of congress; countersigned by St. Peter and endorsed by Solomon. Not that I didn’t sell it with all my heart and soul! I pulled out all the stops and pouted for days. I held fast to my guns and refused to budge. Mom made peanut butter cookies and my resolve melted like sugar candy in boiling water.
I looked for something else.
I came across a tome of ancient knowledge, written fully five years before I was born, called Chemical Sorcery. It contained, among other things, a way to make wet paper burn after a few seconds contact with air! It had page after page of great pyrotechnics.
One may wonder why, having failed so miserably with the selling of the desktop volcano, I put my energy to something that created a bigger mess and cost $300.00 in chemicals (if such chemicals could be located in a town where the “fancy new movie theater” was thirty years old).
I would like to put it down to the innocence of youth, but I think I was just hoping for a project I could run step-by-step out of a book and not have to think about too much. Besides, it wasn’t my money. Again I was refused, but this time there weren't even cookies.
Having been twice thwarted on the easy way to achieve scientific excellence, I decided upon another tactic; electromagnets. My inspiration for this project was a magnet I found broken in half in the bottom of a junk drawer.
Here was the plan: take a few wires, wrap them around the magnet pieces, put some juice to it and let the magnets inside do all of the work. I didn’t know or care what might be the effect of adding electricity to it. Once again, no effort or thought on my part was required, but this time my parents did not have to pay a thing.
I gathered bits and pieces from the junk drawer; one roll of wire, one Band-Aid brand bandage box (made of tin in those days), and two halves of a magnet. I wrapped the stove pipe wire tightly and firmly around each half of the magnet. I was afraid that insulation might spoil the effects of magnetism, so I chose a wire that had none.
Now, if you don’t know stove pipe wire from a pipe cleaner, let me describe it for you. It’s the stuff used to keep hay bales together. It’s thick, solid and conducts electricity as well and as safely as a bathtub full of water.
Did I mention the old electrical cord I found in the same drawer? It used to belong to a kitchen appliance, now it was a consripted part of my science project.
There are two kinds of electricity, positive and negative. That’s why there are two prongs on an electrical cord. Even with as little thought as I wanted to dedicate to the concept of science, I knew that you did not put these two kinds together. So, I split the cord down the middle and soldered each end to a separate stovepipe-wire-mummified magnet. To make the whole thing look better, I cut the Band-Aid box in half with tin snips(it was a tin box, remember), and wrapped each half around one of my creations.
I plugged it in.
I had 110 volts running throughwhat was essentially two electrodes. They laid on the floor, deceptively innocent, waiting for me to do something incredibly stupid. I didn’t make them wait long.
I tested the magnetic field by picking one up and running it over any surface that looked metallic. I tested it over the frame of my bedroom window, over a clip on a pen, anywhere and on anything the cord could reach from the plug near my chair.
The experiment failed miserably. There was no indication of any kind of attraction. There are two kinds of electricity, positive and negative. Perhaps I was using the wrong one. I set it down and repeated the test with the other one.
It failed again. I was not able to produce enough attraction to pull a staple across the floor. I held this thing in my palm for a moment and I began to wonder if perhaps the two pieces would be attracted to each other?
There are two kinds of electricity, the kind in my right hand and the kind my left hand was reaching for. I don’t remember actually holding the other electrode, I do vividly remember the explosion.
I was blown back over the chair and struck my head on the same window sill that refused to be magnetic moments before. In a convulsive movement, I threw the electrodes away from me.
Those who have been clinically dead and those who have had near death experiences sometimes report a brilliant white light at the end of a long tunnel. I did not see a tunnel, nor do I claim to have died, but I have a good idea what that light looks like. I was surprised at the noise though.
Having been thwarted at creating a volcano, I had, inadvertently, discovered a bedroom lightning kit complete with thunder. No longer having me between them, they did indeed find each other attractive. This was not limited to soft magnetic forces, however, they found each other in a arc of pure white electricity. My world exploded in a flash of light, bright and brilliant with a loud, ominous sound.
As sudden as the flash of a camera bulb the room plunged from piercing white light into absolute darkness. I blew a fuse. The same fuse that kept my bedroom light kept the kitchen going too. Mom had company, her sister was over to visit. They were in the living room. I marveled that neither of them had heard the deafening explosions emanating from my room. I suppose that thunder isn’t quite as loud from the opposite end of the house as it is when in your lap.
I formed another plan. If I ran in to the basement, I could replace the fuse and return to my room and no one would ever know. There was a profound flaw in this plan. The basement.. The basement wasn’t simply “the basement”, it was THE BASEMENT.. It scared me to be down there alone. Of course, the other option was to go to my mother and my aunt and confess everything. I braved the basement.
I must admit to some pride at having replaced the fuse and getting power back by myself. I tried to dismantle my creation and destroy the evidence, but the two pieces had melted in the intense heat and fused solid. I buried it in the back yard and watched TV for the rest of the night.
The first time I ever saw someone on television use defibrillators, (two electrodes placed over the chest so that one actor call yell "CLEAR" while another actor shakes himself), I had my first ever body memory, and shook along with the actor.
I don’t know why, but the fair changed. Perhaps I was not the only one in the school experimenting with capital punishment (but I most likely was). Thinking back on it, all science fairs have a commonality – they all cost money. These are not funds that come from the school board to further education, this money comes from browbeaten parents buying $300.00 dollars of chemicals.
I belive this is why the school did a sudden policy reversal. The threat of failure was held firmly over our heads, but instead of a science fair, they decided that we would build a model of an 1800s town.
Each of us were to take a part of the town.
I chose the neighboring Indian village. It was my own idea, though I knew about as much about Indians as I did about electricity.
There were two kinds of Indians, those that had been repeatedly ripped off, abused and rejected by our government, and those that fell off horses in John Wayne movies. Those last kind were white men in red face paint.
My mother loved yogurt. Yogurt was gaining some popularity as were the plastic containers it sold in. She emptied out half a dozen containers into a Tupperware bowl and gave me the empties.
Remove the bottom, slice up one side, roll it up like a funnel and staple it – viola! Instant teepee. No thought there either. I soon had a village of Indians of the “DANNON-FRUIT” tribe. I called the Chief “Strawberry Swirl” Mom didn’t think my teacher would appreciate the humor, so I set about painting each and every one of the teepees. Water color paint on plastic. It worked OK as long it was never touched after it dried. Each yogurt teepee was place carefully over a piece of indoor/outdoor carpeting to simulate grass.
Plastic village on plastic grass, who wouldn’t be proud? Although it didn’t take much thought, it did take up a great deal of time. It was late before it was done, well past my bedtime. The project was due the very next day (I liked tight deadlines ever so much more than my mother did), and I carefully set it on a small table in my room.
I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. It wasn’t until I returned that I realized an important step of the yogurt cup-teepee that I had neglected – rinsing out the old yogurt. My dog had found my model, and decimated four of the six teepees, along with half the grass. The project was in ruins and I had no time to create another, nor did my mother have any yogurt left. I had to walk into class the next day, empty handed and tired from being up all night and loudly proclaim, in front of the class, “The dog ate my homework.”
It was an excuse I had never heard before, but have heard many times since. I will always believe that I am the first to coin this cliché, and am a little bitter that I still do not receive royalties for each time it gets used.
The Indians were not to have a place in the town on our classroom table, but I was given a second chance, I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t completed the assignment. The threat of a failing grade was rattled over my head again as was sent back for another attempt
.
I had gotten an erector set for Christmas. This was the old fashion kind that could almost guarantee an injury with every purchase. It was all steel and iron, bolts and nuts and washers real and sharp and full of burrs. It was a manly kind of toy. It could slice your thumb, rip your skin, or actually amputate fingers in moments. Every piece of metal was sharp as most butcher knives. It was my favorite toy.
This was the super deluxe set with an electric motor, made to run off of a double “A” battery, but all it had were two terminals to hook up wires.
My initial experiments with a “D” size battery proved that the stronger the current, the faster or stronger it would spin..
I built a crane. It was about four feet tall and hinged with bolts, nuts, sheet metal screws and the occasional paperclip. It was a monstrosity in appearance and a health hazard in functionality. There was no end to sharp edges, points and burrs that dotted the crane. I ran a string from the base, over the top and then I put the base on a swivel.
I gave it a motor.
I intended to pick up a brick. I would lift it to the top and then reverse the wires and lower it back down. I needed a lot of power to do that. I found a “D” cell battery.
I hadn’t thought about the brick weighing five or ten times as the flimsy crane. As soon as I put the power to the motor, it wound the string running along the length of the crane in an instant. There was momentary pause before the crane crashed down and began to repeatedly beat itself against the brick. Within seconds, the top of the crane splintered and bent. This set off the rest of the crane, consuming itself on the brick, relentlessly driven by the supercharged motor. Pieces of steel and bolts flew everywhere at once, it was like being in a blizzard of razorblades. Eventually, its own gyrations disconnected the batteries.
The brick hadn’t moved an inch.
Looking over the landscape of the little village, I thought about that motor and it suddenly occurred to me what every small town needs – a mill.
I found a old milkbox and painted it up to look like a house. I had no idea what a mill looked like, and research required effort, so I based it off of the mills I had seen in old movies; a house with a steamboat wheel on one side.
I poked a hole in the side of the box and stuck the drive shaft through it. The wheel was the important part. I fabricated a wonderful wheel out of wood (Popsicle sticks), and was able to mount it to the motor. In order to make this look good, I knew that it would need enough power to spin the wheel.
I got four D cells and strapped them together with a little stovepipe wire I had left over. This time, I kept everything in a box and hidden until I got to school, in case of another dog incident.
Upon reaching school, I proudly displayed my creation to the teacher braced for accolades and praises. I didn’t tell her (or anyone else) about the hidden motor, but I had spent most of my time on it, not on the rest of the mill house.
She was less than enthusiastic.
I set the mill into place in the village and connected the wires in the back. The wheel spun! REALLY FAST! The Popsicle sticks flew off the base of the motor and splintered in mid-air. Several shards went through the train station and still others decimated a few private houses.
The motor was thrown off balance. The mill house lifted itself in the air and spun like a dolphin jumping out of water. The overloaded motor began to smoke wih a foul smelling oily substance. In mid arch, the batteries released from their wires and separated. Mill house and motor landed on the school house (the one on the table), smoke still billowing from the coils. For a short, horrifying moment, the sleepy table top village had hail the size of 55 gallon drums with the words DURACELL emblazoned across them.
The display was never shown on parent teacher night, and I never did get a replacement motor. I did pass the class though.
or How I destroyed a small village
During the spring months of the sixth grade, when I was nearly through the year and out of Sunnyside elementary, my school had a science fair.
Major universities were not about to beat a path to the school, waving scholarships in the air for our projects and there was no cash reward for winners. Participation in the fair was unanimous by all members of the fifth and sixth grades, by virtue of the faculty threatening to fail us all if we didn’t enter a project.
No muse could have provided greater inspiration than this.
The classroom was not really my comfort zone, nor was I in anyway athletic or “outdoorsy”. I wanted to be a bookworm, so to that end, I was a permenent feature of our school’s library as much as any shelf, card catalog or magazine rack.
it was here I found some wonderful ideas for my project, the benefit being they were already written out with easy to follow instructions. I found one in particular that really spurred my imagination.
PART I. LIGHNTING IN AN EASY CHAIR
Selling the idea of a working model of an active volcano to my parents, especially my mother who would have to clean up afterward, would have required a declaration of congress; countersigned by St. Peter and endorsed by Solomon. Not that I didn’t sell it with all my heart and soul! I pulled out all the stops and pouted for days. I held fast to my guns and refused to budge. Mom made peanut butter cookies and my resolve melted like sugar candy in boiling water.
I looked for something else.
I came across a tome of ancient knowledge, written fully five years before I was born, called Chemical Sorcery. It contained, among other things, a way to make wet paper burn after a few seconds contact with air! It had page after page of great pyrotechnics.
One may wonder why, having failed so miserably with the selling of the desktop volcano, I put my energy to something that created a bigger mess and cost $300.00 in chemicals (if such chemicals could be located in a town where the “fancy new movie theater” was thirty years old).
I would like to put it down to the innocence of youth, but I think I was just hoping for a project I could run step-by-step out of a book and not have to think about too much. Besides, it wasn’t my money. Again I was refused, but this time there weren't even cookies.
Having been twice thwarted on the easy way to achieve scientific excellence, I decided upon another tactic; electromagnets. My inspiration for this project was a magnet I found broken in half in the bottom of a junk drawer.
Here was the plan: take a few wires, wrap them around the magnet pieces, put some juice to it and let the magnets inside do all of the work. I didn’t know or care what might be the effect of adding electricity to it. Once again, no effort or thought on my part was required, but this time my parents did not have to pay a thing.
I gathered bits and pieces from the junk drawer; one roll of wire, one Band-Aid brand bandage box (made of tin in those days), and two halves of a magnet. I wrapped the stove pipe wire tightly and firmly around each half of the magnet. I was afraid that insulation might spoil the effects of magnetism, so I chose a wire that had none.
Now, if you don’t know stove pipe wire from a pipe cleaner, let me describe it for you. It’s the stuff used to keep hay bales together. It’s thick, solid and conducts electricity as well and as safely as a bathtub full of water.
Did I mention the old electrical cord I found in the same drawer? It used to belong to a kitchen appliance, now it was a consripted part of my science project.
There are two kinds of electricity, positive and negative. That’s why there are two prongs on an electrical cord. Even with as little thought as I wanted to dedicate to the concept of science, I knew that you did not put these two kinds together. So, I split the cord down the middle and soldered each end to a separate stovepipe-wire-mummified magnet. To make the whole thing look better, I cut the Band-Aid box in half with tin snips(it was a tin box, remember), and wrapped each half around one of my creations.
I plugged it in.
I had 110 volts running throughwhat was essentially two electrodes. They laid on the floor, deceptively innocent, waiting for me to do something incredibly stupid. I didn’t make them wait long.
I tested the magnetic field by picking one up and running it over any surface that looked metallic. I tested it over the frame of my bedroom window, over a clip on a pen, anywhere and on anything the cord could reach from the plug near my chair.
The experiment failed miserably. There was no indication of any kind of attraction. There are two kinds of electricity, positive and negative. Perhaps I was using the wrong one. I set it down and repeated the test with the other one.
It failed again. I was not able to produce enough attraction to pull a staple across the floor. I held this thing in my palm for a moment and I began to wonder if perhaps the two pieces would be attracted to each other?
There are two kinds of electricity, the kind in my right hand and the kind my left hand was reaching for. I don’t remember actually holding the other electrode, I do vividly remember the explosion.
I was blown back over the chair and struck my head on the same window sill that refused to be magnetic moments before. In a convulsive movement, I threw the electrodes away from me.
Those who have been clinically dead and those who have had near death experiences sometimes report a brilliant white light at the end of a long tunnel. I did not see a tunnel, nor do I claim to have died, but I have a good idea what that light looks like. I was surprised at the noise though.
Having been thwarted at creating a volcano, I had, inadvertently, discovered a bedroom lightning kit complete with thunder. No longer having me between them, they did indeed find each other attractive. This was not limited to soft magnetic forces, however, they found each other in a arc of pure white electricity. My world exploded in a flash of light, bright and brilliant with a loud, ominous sound.
As sudden as the flash of a camera bulb the room plunged from piercing white light into absolute darkness. I blew a fuse. The same fuse that kept my bedroom light kept the kitchen going too. Mom had company, her sister was over to visit. They were in the living room. I marveled that neither of them had heard the deafening explosions emanating from my room. I suppose that thunder isn’t quite as loud from the opposite end of the house as it is when in your lap.
I formed another plan. If I ran in to the basement, I could replace the fuse and return to my room and no one would ever know. There was a profound flaw in this plan. The basement.. The basement wasn’t simply “the basement”, it was THE BASEMENT.. It scared me to be down there alone. Of course, the other option was to go to my mother and my aunt and confess everything. I braved the basement.
I must admit to some pride at having replaced the fuse and getting power back by myself. I tried to dismantle my creation and destroy the evidence, but the two pieces had melted in the intense heat and fused solid. I buried it in the back yard and watched TV for the rest of the night.
The first time I ever saw someone on television use defibrillators, (two electrodes placed over the chest so that one actor call yell "CLEAR" while another actor shakes himself), I had my first ever body memory, and shook along with the actor.
II. THE DOG ATE MY TEEPEE
I don’t know why, but the fair changed. Perhaps I was not the only one in the school experimenting with capital punishment (but I most likely was). Thinking back on it, all science fairs have a commonality – they all cost money. These are not funds that come from the school board to further education, this money comes from browbeaten parents buying $300.00 dollars of chemicals.
I belive this is why the school did a sudden policy reversal. The threat of failure was held firmly over our heads, but instead of a science fair, they decided that we would build a model of an 1800s town.
Each of us were to take a part of the town.
I chose the neighboring Indian village. It was my own idea, though I knew about as much about Indians as I did about electricity.
There were two kinds of Indians, those that had been repeatedly ripped off, abused and rejected by our government, and those that fell off horses in John Wayne movies. Those last kind were white men in red face paint.
My mother loved yogurt. Yogurt was gaining some popularity as were the plastic containers it sold in. She emptied out half a dozen containers into a Tupperware bowl and gave me the empties.
Remove the bottom, slice up one side, roll it up like a funnel and staple it – viola! Instant teepee. No thought there either. I soon had a village of Indians of the “DANNON-FRUIT” tribe. I called the Chief “Strawberry Swirl” Mom didn’t think my teacher would appreciate the humor, so I set about painting each and every one of the teepees. Water color paint on plastic. It worked OK as long it was never touched after it dried. Each yogurt teepee was place carefully over a piece of indoor/outdoor carpeting to simulate grass.
Plastic village on plastic grass, who wouldn’t be proud? Although it didn’t take much thought, it did take up a great deal of time. It was late before it was done, well past my bedtime. The project was due the very next day (I liked tight deadlines ever so much more than my mother did), and I carefully set it on a small table in my room.
I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for bed. It wasn’t until I returned that I realized an important step of the yogurt cup-teepee that I had neglected – rinsing out the old yogurt. My dog had found my model, and decimated four of the six teepees, along with half the grass. The project was in ruins and I had no time to create another, nor did my mother have any yogurt left. I had to walk into class the next day, empty handed and tired from being up all night and loudly proclaim, in front of the class, “The dog ate my homework.”
It was an excuse I had never heard before, but have heard many times since. I will always believe that I am the first to coin this cliché, and am a little bitter that I still do not receive royalties for each time it gets used.
III. VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED
The Indians were not to have a place in the town on our classroom table, but I was given a second chance, I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t completed the assignment. The threat of a failing grade was rattled over my head again as was sent back for another attempt
.
I had gotten an erector set for Christmas. This was the old fashion kind that could almost guarantee an injury with every purchase. It was all steel and iron, bolts and nuts and washers real and sharp and full of burrs. It was a manly kind of toy. It could slice your thumb, rip your skin, or actually amputate fingers in moments. Every piece of metal was sharp as most butcher knives. It was my favorite toy.
This was the super deluxe set with an electric motor, made to run off of a double “A” battery, but all it had were two terminals to hook up wires.
My initial experiments with a “D” size battery proved that the stronger the current, the faster or stronger it would spin..
I built a crane. It was about four feet tall and hinged with bolts, nuts, sheet metal screws and the occasional paperclip. It was a monstrosity in appearance and a health hazard in functionality. There was no end to sharp edges, points and burrs that dotted the crane. I ran a string from the base, over the top and then I put the base on a swivel.
I gave it a motor.
I intended to pick up a brick. I would lift it to the top and then reverse the wires and lower it back down. I needed a lot of power to do that. I found a “D” cell battery.
I hadn’t thought about the brick weighing five or ten times as the flimsy crane. As soon as I put the power to the motor, it wound the string running along the length of the crane in an instant. There was momentary pause before the crane crashed down and began to repeatedly beat itself against the brick. Within seconds, the top of the crane splintered and bent. This set off the rest of the crane, consuming itself on the brick, relentlessly driven by the supercharged motor. Pieces of steel and bolts flew everywhere at once, it was like being in a blizzard of razorblades. Eventually, its own gyrations disconnected the batteries.
The brick hadn’t moved an inch.
Looking over the landscape of the little village, I thought about that motor and it suddenly occurred to me what every small town needs – a mill.
I found a old milkbox and painted it up to look like a house. I had no idea what a mill looked like, and research required effort, so I based it off of the mills I had seen in old movies; a house with a steamboat wheel on one side.
I poked a hole in the side of the box and stuck the drive shaft through it. The wheel was the important part. I fabricated a wonderful wheel out of wood (Popsicle sticks), and was able to mount it to the motor. In order to make this look good, I knew that it would need enough power to spin the wheel.
I got four D cells and strapped them together with a little stovepipe wire I had left over. This time, I kept everything in a box and hidden until I got to school, in case of another dog incident.
Upon reaching school, I proudly displayed my creation to the teacher braced for accolades and praises. I didn’t tell her (or anyone else) about the hidden motor, but I had spent most of my time on it, not on the rest of the mill house.
She was less than enthusiastic.
I set the mill into place in the village and connected the wires in the back. The wheel spun! REALLY FAST! The Popsicle sticks flew off the base of the motor and splintered in mid-air. Several shards went through the train station and still others decimated a few private houses.
The motor was thrown off balance. The mill house lifted itself in the air and spun like a dolphin jumping out of water. The overloaded motor began to smoke wih a foul smelling oily substance. In mid arch, the batteries released from their wires and separated. Mill house and motor landed on the school house (the one on the table), smoke still billowing from the coils. For a short, horrifying moment, the sleepy table top village had hail the size of 55 gallon drums with the words DURACELL emblazoned across them.
The display was never shown on parent teacher night, and I never did get a replacement motor. I did pass the class though.
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