Searching For Science

Friday, January 20, 2005

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Searching For Science

By J’AMY PACHECO

As the mother of a little girl, there are some things I expect to worry about. Puberty, driving lessons, college tuition and empty nest syndrome are among the issues I know will come knocking at my emotional door before long before I’m ready.

But as a literary-minded mom, I never expected to have to worry about meeting the needs of a scientifically minded little offspring.

There is not a scientific bone in my body. (Since, technically, the bones in my body COULD be considered somehow science-related, the mere fact that I wrote the sentence before this one pretty much proves my point.)

I don’t remember anything I learned as a student in the area of science. I do recall having to dissect a frog, but I only recall two things: the unbearable stench, and the misfortune of having opened up the only frog that had something interesting in its stomach, which my teacher brought to the attention of the entire class. The only thing I took from that lesson was the decision to decline any offers to attend medical school.

And I never, ever even considered entering a science fair.

It came, therefore, as a great surprise when my then-first grade daughter begged to enter her school’s science fair two years ago. She spent her spring break performing an experiment in which she watered seeds with different (and I do mean different) liquids to see which would germinate first.

Caffeine free Diet Coke won the germination race, and my budding scientist not only won the first grade category at her school, but brought home a “Best of the Best” award from the school district’s competition.

In second grade, she investigated what happened when different objects were left in a hot car. She placed thermometers inside and outside my car, and meticulously recorded temperatures for weeks. Crayons melted on a relatively cool day, and a philodendron named “Bob” thrived while living in the car. Her results were a big hit with the judges, and she repeated her double-win.

Her best-friend-since-the-age-of-three, Courtney, also won in both competitions for her accidental creation of a landfill.

As the girls celebrated their quadruple win last year, they vowed to work together on a project in third grade. For nearly a year, they struggled to come up with a topic that would be original, interesting, and that had room for their quirky brand of humor.

Their scientifically inadequate mothers agonized over potential choices, usually thinking too big. Most ideas were rejected as being too complex for our budding scientists, who we sometimes forget are only eight.

And we worried. Mostly we worried about how to keep up with children who appear to be a whole lot smarter than their parents.

I have no idea how I gave birth to a little Einstein. If she didn’t look so much like her father, I’d accuse the hospital of giving me the wrong baby.

Since Courtney’s mom and I attended the school and district science fairs two years in a row, we have a pretty good idea of what’s been done and overdone. Food coloring in a flower’s water, teeth dissolved in soda, which-soap-or-toothpaste is most effective, which chewing gum’s flavor lasts the longest — these experiments have been done so often that even I know how they’ll turn out. Mock erupting volcanoes have been done so frequently that my daughter’s school bars them from entry.

We’ve also seen some very unique experiments — like the sixth grade girl who collected swabs from public drinking fountains in local department stores and grew cultures to see which fountains were the most disgusting. The city’s most upscale store won — or lost, depending on how you view drinking fountain yuck — a result that surprised a whole lot of grown ups that day.

The science fair experiments are due next month, and I’m happy to say that after 11 months of agonizing, the girls have come up with a topic. I’m sworn to secrecy, but I can say the project has, thus far, been both interesting and fun. It’s also somewhat unique — largely because I think few people are nutty enough to view it as a scientific project.

The girls are hard at work on a research project that involves an enormous display board, three not-exactly-to-scale models, and a journal. (Thank Heaven for the writing part — at least I can help with that.)

The only thing left to worry about is how they’ll fare with their entry when the judges come calling next month.

Well, that and puberty, driving lessons, college tuition…