The STEM Night Disaster Read online

  “I know I did the battery right.” I gritted my teeth.

  “You’ll figure it out,” said Elijah.

  “I sure hope so,” I murmured.

  “I’m going to go over and take some photos of the other projects,” said Ms. Gottfried.

  “Okay.” I smiled but inside I felt like such a fool. My cheeks warmed. “I can’t believe it didn’t work.” Taking a deep breath, I tried to relax.

  “Let’s meet over by my desk,” said Ms. Daly in a gentle voice.

  I dragged over to Ms. Daly, whose desk was more like a counter in the front of the lab.

  “Kate, what do you think happened?” she asked.

  “Maybe it’s a bad lemon. I read that before you stick in the copper and the zinc, you’re supposed to squeeze the lemon. I forgot!”

  “Okay,” said Ms. Daly. “Did you think about how much power it takes to start a motor on a robot though?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I didn’t even think about that. I should have probably tested how much power I needed.”

  “That’s what I wanted to show you.” Ms. Daly grabbed a small black machine off a shelf above her desk. “I have a voltmeter. We can test the voltage of your battery.”

  “That’s awesome!” I had no idea that even existed. I wanted to borrow it and test the power of everything!

  Ms. Daly placed the red probe tip on the copper. “Now you put the black probe tip on the zinc.”

  After I touched the black probe to the nail, the screen of the voltmeter read 0.912 V. “Probably not enough energy to power the robot,” I said. “Is the V for volts?”

  “Yup.” Ms. Daly closed her eyes as if counting in her head. “If my math is correct, it would take over one thousand lemons to get that robot moving. You’re going to need a lot more juice, if you want it to run.”

  I let out a low chuckle at Ms. Daly’s corny joke. But inside, I was kicking myself for not thinking this through. I definitely needed to find something that used a lot less electricity than this robot. But what? My eyes scanned the items on Ms. Daly’s desk. I spotted a simple-looking calculator. “Could I use that?”

  “Of course,” said Ms. Daly.

  “Thank you so much.” I waved the calculator in the air and called out to my group as I headed back to the table. “You guys, I’m going to use my lemons to fire up a calculator.” I tried to sound happy but I was more than a weensy bit disappointed. A calculator was definitely not as cool as a robot. It might even be a little bit boring.

  “I guess I really should have tested this”—I pointed to the lemon—“out first.”

  “You know what they say,” said Jeremy. “It’s always best to test.”

  “Who is they?” asked Phoenix.

  Jeremy thumped his chest. “Me!” When he did that, my lemon knocked to the floor into a pile of sticky dirt that had fallen out of Phoenix’s project earlier.

  Groaning, I pulled the zinc and copper out of the lemon.

  “When you get a lemon,” I said, “sometimes you just have to make lemonade.” Then I squashed the lemon under my foot, which felt good. I couldn’t help feeling a little upset at the lemon, even though it wasn’t its fault that it didn’t generate enough juice to power the robot. Then I scooped up the lemon, wiped up its juice with my sleeve, and tossed it into the trash.

  Phoenix’s mouth dropped open. “Kate, why did you do that?” She pointed to the wastebasket. Then she took the lemon out again and added it to her composting project. At least the lemon would get to be part of STEM Night one way or another.

  “Don’t give up, Kate,” said Ms. Daly from the next table, where she was helping Rory with his cloud experiment.

  “I won’t,” I said, even though I wasn’t feeling super excited about powering up a calculator. I thought about real scientists. Real scientists did not give up. They did not squash lemons. It took Thomas Edison over a thousand tries to invent the light bulb.

  So I refused to be droopy about all of this. “It’s okay, I have a bag of fresh lemons in the back. I’ll get another one.”

  With the calculator in my hand, I raced to the side counter next to the sink where I had stored a bag of extra lemons. Only I didn’t see the bag, so I checked the glass cabinet above. No bag. I checked again. I opened some drawers. Not there either. My eyes swept the counter surface, even the floor. But no luck. The lemons were gone!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Making Lemonade

  Materials (noun). An exact description of what is needed for a project or experiment. It should be clear enough that someone could copy your project. Think of it like a list of the ingredients in chocolate chip cookies. You can’t leave anything out (especially not the chocolate chips!).

  AFTER SCHOOL, I RACED TO THE FRIDGE to find more lemons. In one drawer, I dug through lettuce, carrots, and celery. In another, I found apples, pears, and even a persimmon.

  “Not one? Really?” Outside, the clouds sat low and gray. It was beginning to drizzle. I hoped that didn’t mean soccer practice would be canceled. I so badly needed to kick a soccer ball right now. I paced in circles. Didn’t Mom always have lemons around for her herbal tea? How could we be out? “I don’t believe it.”

  Liam popped into the kitchen. “What don’t you believe?”

  “No lemons. And I need them for my science project.”

  “You need lemons so Norbert can do karate, right?” Liam chopped the air with his hands.

  “I wish.” Jumping up to sit on the counter, I swung my legs side to side. “I’m sorry. But I can’t use your robot. Lemon batteries don’t have enough power.”

  “Don’t worry, Kate.” Liam grunted and made muscles. His face turned as red as the maple tree in front of our house. “I got power for you!”

  “You do. Lots.” I laughed.

  He started bouncing and spinning. And spinning some more.

  “Have you been eating sugar?” I asked.

  “Four grams,” he said with a serious face.

  “Where did you come up with that number?”

  “Actually, I ate twenty hundred million grams. My friend Gracie gave me a giant marshmallow.” He motioned with his hands to show me.

  “Oh, that explains everything.”

  He giggled. Then he got a serious look on his face. “Can’t you go shopping for lemons? Maybe you could buy a whole lemon tree?”

  I glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Avery’s mom is picking me up in fifteen minutes. I’ve got soccer practice. At least, I hope I do. I’m worried the rain might make them cancel.”

  “Daddy and I can go shopping. He’s finishing up some work in his office.” Liam pointed to the kitchen doorway leading to Dad’s home office. He’s a psychologist.

  “I heard my name,” said Dad, striding into the kitchen. “How was school today?”

  Oh boy. My dad isn’t one for keeping your feelings to yourself. He encourages us to talk about pretty much everything. So I told him what happened today at school. All of it. Even the very embarrassing part.

  “What a great experience,” he said, smiling so his mustache waggled. “Realizing you made a miscalculation and that you need to try again.”

  “Great?” Maybe in Opposite Land. That’s a land that Birdie and I made up when we were little.

  “All great scientists learn by what doesn’t work,” said Dad. “You know that.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” That’s when I told him about the missing lemons.

  “Maybe they rolled onto the floor,” suggested Dad.

  “Or maybe somebody was hungry for lemonade.” Liam mimed drinking.

  “You mean thirsty.” Dad ruffled Liam’s hair.

  “What’s something else you know about science?” asked Dad. “Especially conclusions?”

  “You don’t jump to them,” I said.

  With a gig
gle, Liam jumped up onto a step stool. “Like this.”

  “Be careful, Liam.” Dad pulled off his slippers and put on his running shoes.

  “I have another problem.” I pulled Ms. Daly’s calculator out of my backpack. She said I could borrow it until STEM Night. “Powering it up doesn’t seem like enough. I want to do something really cool that will impress the judges. Especially Dr. Caroline.”

  “Maybe you can add something special?” suggested Dad.

  “Hot Wheels cars!” shouted Liam, making a vrooming sound. “With lots of jumps and ramps.” Then he pointed to the stack of board games on our shelves. “It could crash into dominoes like in that Dr. Caroline video.”

  “Hey, that’s a very interesting idea!” And that’s when I remembered something high on the shelf right above my bed. “I’ll be back in a sec!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Sweet Spot

  Matter (noun). Anything that takes up space, which means it has mass. It can be a solid, liquid, or gas. That means the air in a balloon is matter, the water that comes out of your kitchen sink is matter, and you’re matter, too.

  I PULLED A LARGE and very plump strawberry out of a wicker box on a shelf above my bed.

  Liam charged into my bedroom. His eyes grew big. “Can I eat it? Yum!”

  “Sorry, but it’s not real.”

  “Aw, man.” His little shoulders sagged. “It sure looks real.”

  “It’s real in that it’s made out of matter. But you can’t eat this strawberry because it’s wax.”

  “Like a candle?” asked Liam regretfully.

  “Yup! It was a birthday candle Birdie made for me, but it was so pretty I never asked Mom or Dad to light it.” If it had been an actual strawberry, it would have decomposed like the orange in Phoenix’s experiment. Luckily, it was art. Birdie gave it to me when I turned eight. She makes me something every year: a heart made out of yarn and Popsicle sticks, a hand-knitted scarf, a purple friendship bracelet. Each birthday present is awesome, and I kept all of them in my wicker box in my bedroom where Dribble, our dog, can’t get to them.

  But the wax strawberry might be the cutest. I loved the green stem and the little black wax seeds. “I can use this as part of my STEM project.”

  “Are you going to melt it?” asked Liam.

  “No way.” I shuddered, thinking about it all drippy and melty. “It’s going to be part of my Rube Goldberg machine, just like in that Dr. Caroline video. Only I’m going to use lots of branches of science.” My fingers brushed over the smooth cool surface of the strawberry. “Maybe the strawberry will plop into a cup and cause—”

  “A flood?”

  I laughed. “Something really awesome will definitely happen. You can count on it!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Something’s Really Up

  Electrochemistry (noun). A branch of chemistry dealing with metals. An electrochemist figured out how to make the coating on your sunglasses and the microchip in your computer.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Tuesday, I was skipping down the hall to class. Because last night, I had figured out my Rube Goldberg machine!

  It was going to be so much fun to make. There was going to be stuff like a ramp, a pebble, dominoes, and Birdie’s strawberry, of course!

  Behind me, Elijah hurried to catch up.

  “Wow. Kate,” he called out. “You’re in a rush.”

  “Yup!” I whirled around to wait for him. Then I explained to Elijah how I was going to put lemon batteries and the calculator into a Rube Goldberg machine. “I thought about it all last night. I’m going to use a few lemons to power a little fan, which is chemistry and engineering. Then blow a pebble down a ramp, which would be earth science and geology. The pebble will knock into dominoes, which is physics. And the dominoes will push the strawberry—which is botany, you know, the study of plants—off a ledge into a cup of water. The water will overflow, wetting a piece of tissue paper that’s underneath it. Through capillary action (and more chemistry!), the spilled water will creep up the tissue paper that has been pulled tightly over a small vertical plastic arm. The water will force the tissue paper to break, and then the little plastic arm will pop up and push a button to turn on the vertically standing calculator, which will also be powered by lemons!”

  “So cool!” Elijah gushed. “It’s kind of like a game we have at home—Mousetrap.”

  “That’s just what Birdie said!” I had called her about the machine idea last night. “I just love that I’m getting so many branches of science into my demo. And I can explain all of them to Dr. Caroline. It’s like I’m doing six projects in one!”

  As I stood next to the water fountain, Rory slunk by and gave me a very strange look.

  His eyebrows scrunched weirdly, as if I had my shirt on inside out or something. “What’s with him?”

  Elijah shrugged. “No clue.”

  “Well, I know what’s up with me. I’ve got everything I need for my machine, including lemons, a ramp, dominoes, a cup, a wax strawberry, tissue paper, Ms. Daly’s calculator, and a plastic arm.” I twirled my grocery bag full of supplies. Then I whispered, “This time, I’m putting everything in the very back of my cubby in our classroom. That way nothing can fall out. And it would be harder for someone to grab.”

  “Do you think someone actually took the lemons yesterday? I mean, sure, if you wanted to make lemonade. But you’d need sugar, water, and a pitcher. What kid would have all of that?”

  “Memito,” I blurted.

  “Oh, c’mon. Do you really think he would’ve done that?”

  I thought about it. He loved anything to do with cooking and recipes. But I didn’t think he would take my lemons. “Nah.” I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” I looked both ways down the mostly empty hallway. We had driven in early with Mom. “I want to put the stuff back in the classroom without anybody seeing.”

  Elijah made a face. “So, I’m not anybody?”

  “You’re definitely somebody. You’re one of my best friends. That’s why you don’t count as a suspect.”

  “Well, that’s an acceptable answer,” he said, and looked pleased.

  He followed me into the classroom, where our teacher, Mrs. Eberlin, was stapling worksheets. “You two are in bright and early.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Mom had an early meeting and we came with her. Plus, I wanted to put some of the materials for my STEM Night project away. To keep them safe.”

  “Good idea. How’s the project going?” asked Mrs. Eberlin.

  “Great,” I said. And it was true. I was going in a different direction. But it felt so right.

  Mrs. Eberlin neatened her stack. “How about you, Elijah?”

  “Good.” He pulled his drumsticks out of his backpack. “Getting graded to drum. Can’t complain.”

  “It’s always better to do what’s in your heart,” Mrs. Eberlin said with a smile.

  Luckily for me, I loved science—all of it. And I loved that even with the Rube Goldberg machine, I was still doing some chemistry. Learning about how electrons move through metals was a branch of chemistry called electrochemistry. After gently stuffing all of my supplies, including the strawberry, in the back of my cubby, I turned to Elijah.

  “I’m going to meet up with Birdie by the basketball court. Want to come?”

  “Sure,” said Elijah.

  “See you soon,” said Mrs. Eberlin.

  All morning, all I could think about was my project. School dragged except for when we got to language arts. That was because we were going to write haiku poems about our STEM project.

  “And you get to write them with these,” said Mrs. Eberlin, shaking a cardboard box mailer. “My sister Lucia mailed me pens from Buenos Aires.”

  “Yay!” cried Birdie.

  Mrs. Eberlin held up different kinds and different colors. “My sister ow
ns an art supply store. And these are some extra mismatched ones that she had lying around. They’re a present for doing such good work so far on your language arts projects. Just reach on in there and pick which pen you’d like.”

  Birdie picked a cyan blue one.

  I picked a fuchsia pink one.

  Then we used the pens to write haiku about our science projects.

  A haiku is a type of Japanese poetry that I love because it’s so organized. The first line has five syllables, the second line seven, and the last line has five.

  “You know why I like haiku?” said Elijah. “Because they’re short poems.”

  “Don’t you like poetry?” asked Phoenix.

  “I do, but I like it even better when it’s short,” he said.

  “It definitely makes it faster to write,” I added as I finished my own poem.

  Rube Goldberg Machine

  By Kate Crawford

  This cool machine is

  A chain reaction that shows

  Six types of science

  Mrs. Eberlin loved our poems and said she was going to put them up on the class bulletin board. And best of all, after language arts, it was finally time for us to bring our materials to the science lab.

  Racing over to my cubby, I grabbed the bag of supplies. Then I carefully pulled out the tissue-wrapped wax strawberry.

  I called Birdie over. “Your present is going to be the most important part of my Rube Goldberg machine,” I said, my voice rising in excitement. “It will be awesome.”

  “Let me see.”

  I slowly unwrapped Birdie’s strawberry.

  Only it didn’t look like a strawberry.

  It was completely smooshed. “What?!” I stared at the misshapen glob of wax. “How did this happen? I wrapped it extra carefully.”

  I blinked my eyes really quickly so I wouldn’t cry.