When I was in school, every year they had what they called "The Science Fair". This consisted of all us students coming up with something scientific that would dazzle the other students, the project judges, and the scientific community in general. The fair was held in the school cafeteria. There were rows of tables containing each kid’s project. Most, if not all, of them had white poster paper behind them. All the poster papers were folded into threes and stood up behind each project and had descriptions of the project written with "Magic Markers®". To this day when I smell a “Magic Marker®”, I think of “The Science Fair”.  You’re probably wondering why I inserted a “Registered trade mark” after “Magic Marker®? (Just because I can®®®®). After examining each project, the judges would award you with a “Superior”, a “Satisfactory”, or an “Unsatisfactory”. I never actually saw anyone judging any projects. Maybe they were undercover so they wouldn’t make anyone nervous. I could have had a project judge stand right in front of me and I wouldn’t have been bothered in the least. Having no ambition during my 12 years of school, my projects were last minute affairs done for the only reason that we had to. As a result, I always received a “Satisfactory” on all my projects. I was lucky to get even that! I harbored absolutely no aspirations to become a scientist. My only aspiration was to have the school day end so I could make a hasty exit out of there in order to pursue various unscientific endeavors such as getting home to watch the Three Stooges or hang out on the street corner in front of "Brownie" Daniel's Store and act "cool".

 

In the 6^th grade a day before “The Science Fair”, I didn’t have the faintest idea what my project would be, and didn’t really care. Mrs. Hutchins came to my rescue and filled a small box with sawdust she obtained from the shop work area. She then mixed some nails in the sawdust and somehow found a small magnet. She put a sign behind the box that read, “See if you can find the nails”. Hey, it wasn’t much, but at least I had a project, which was a whole lot more than I had earlier. Later on in high school, one year I did a project about John Glenn. Since the Science Fair was the next day, as usual, I was desperate to come up with some project. At last it occurred to me! I took a sheet of the ubiquitous white poster board our mother had purchased for us, and got a Time Magazine that I saw laying around that had John Glenn’s picture on the cover. I cut out all the pictures in the article about him and pasted them on the white poster board. Bingo! I had my project without a moment to loose! I was relieved that once again I had dodged a bullet for yet another year! With the exception of the magnetic nails and this project, I don’t recall what projects I did all the other years. I’m sure they were started the night before and were just as mundane as the rest. Tim wasn’t nearly as much of a procrastinator as I was. He started his projects at least 2 days before I did. One year he had a project on old arrowheads. He grabbed a few from the cigar box that held all the arrowheads our dad, uncle Ned and grandfather found on the farm. He had someone cut a big arrowhead shape from a piece of plywood, and glued some of them on it. Another year in High School, Tim decided to do a project on penicillin. Since it was made from some kind of mold, he got some from a moldy piece of food from Aunt Lou’s refrigerator.

 

Some of the kids had some very fascinating projects, which they (undoubtedly their parents) had made. Gary H. always had interesting projects because his father worked at NASA. One year he had a magnetic contraption that made metal hoops hang in mid air around a big column which was an electro magnet or something. You were supposed to turn it on before placing the hoop over the column. When he turned it off, the hoop would drop to the bottom of the column. When he turned it with the hoop resting on the bottom platform of the column, it would fly upward with a lot of speed and force and hit the ceiling! We all had a lot of fun playing with it and watching the hoop projectile repeatedly hit the ceiling and bounce back down at a high rate of speed and hit the floor, other projects, or other people if they were too close.

 

Since it was during the days of the A-bomb scare, a lot of kids had model bomb shelters made out of sugar cubes. Scientifically speaking, I never could figure out what bomb shelters had to do with science unless maybe the sugar cube ones would come in handy if we were attacked by a giant Saccharine bomb.

 

The kids that received a “Superior” for their project then went to the “District Science Fair”. I had no idea where it was nor did I care since I considered myself extremely fortunate that I just received a “Satisfactory” on any one of my “Projects”. I wonder if you received an “Unsatisfactory” on your project what they would have done to you. Were you forever exiled to some isolated laboratory to wash test tubes or something?

 

Looking back, I never understood why the schools were so obsessed with having each student mess around with science projects in the first place. That was about as useful as dissecting formaldehyde laden frogs in Biology class, which would only be useful in later life if you wanted to cut off the legs of a frog to have frog legs for dinner. I didn’t need a “Science Fair” to come up with some significant scientific ideas later in life. Some of my ideas along these lines are to design a Braille steering wheel so blind people can drive. I may even tackle the age-old question of “What do cats and women want?” Hmmm, I may avoid that one and tackle a much easier one like, “What is the secret to immortality?” At least with this one an answer is attainable. Another scientific question I’m always seeking to answer is, “Why does bathroom water taste different than kitchen water?” After years of research, I’m still mystified regarding this phenomenon. I’ve done extensive pragmatic research by thinking back to my own experiences and interviewing little kids who ask for a glass of water at bedtime. Alas, I’m still no closer to an explanation. Even now I never get a drink from the bathroom washbasin faucet. The one theory I’m pondering at the moment is that plumbers habitually mix up the water pipes to the toilet and bathroom washbasin. However, there is one experiment I did as a kid that was a stunning breakthrough in the biological science field. I took a grasshopper and tore its right front leg off and clapped my hands and it hopped. I then tore off the left front leg and clapped and it hopped again. I proceeded to tear the right rear leg off and clapped again. The grasshopper managed to hop sideways a small distance of approximately 3.071 millimeters to the left side. I then tore off the remaining left rear leg and clapped repeatedly as loud as I could. The grasshopper just stood there motionless. I concluded from this scientific experiment that grasshoppers without legs suddenly become totally deaf. Therefore, even though I harbored no aspirations for science as a kid, you can see that in spite of that, I did do significant research and discovered great breakthroughs!

 

Oh well, I’ll put aside my many further scientific ponderings for now such as where does the white go when snow melts and write about them some other time as I complete more research at some future time…