Science fair memories are stuff of bad dreams

NEWS OF NOTE

Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

The younger perfect daughter is now, officially, a rocket scientist.

Yes, it's science fair time once again at Chez Davis, and, my goodness, how times have changed since I was in school. I recall wrestling with huge sheets of smudged poster board, lumpy clay planets and semi-understood stages of the scientific method. A big victory was being able to spell "hypothesis" correctly on the first try.

Now, my little darling is testing the effect of different fin shapes on the length of flight of rockets (perfectly safe air-propelled "stomp" rockets, for the worry warts out there). She's discoursing knowledgeably about the physics of aerodynamics and using equations. And she's toying with a Web page or PowerPoint presentation for her "display." (Remember when "PowerPoint" or "PlayStation" would definitely have been a typo? I do.)

My most sophisticated project involved varying the amount of sugar and yeast in a certain volume of water (I believe it was a fifth) to see the effect of changing the variables on the amount of alcohol I ended up with after fermentation was complete. I chose the topic because I was 15 and a smart … ah … aleck. I remember being absolutely frantic when the number on the little specific gravity gauge I borrowed from the physics lab turned up the same in all of the batches of yeasty sugar water. I finally realized I was reading it wrong, but by then permanent damage had been done to my psyche. I got a D.

I have a photo here on my desk of my older perfect daughter helping my beautiful wife with a soil survey (she's a federal scientist, or, as I like to tease her, a bureaucrat with an earth augur). This led to a science fair project about a year later involving soil type classification and how that helps farmers, developers and others decide what to plant or build or leave alone. She's about 6 in the picture. I know where they get their brains, and it's not from me.

I am ambivalent about science, partly as a result of my experience with attempts to educate me in it (I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights after a dream about matrix algebra in genetics class. Thankfully, by then I was in college and could drop the class instead of suffering another D).

But then there are experiments I read about which make me think I should have persevered, like one from some institute in Germany the basic conclusion of which is that, if one is hot and sweaty after strenuous exercise, beer is refreshing.

I don't doubt the premise, but I still think it deserves the rigorous experimental trial I am putting it through.

Another one I read about concludes that men who work with pretty young women, at a college, say, are more likely to have affairs with pretty young women than men who don't. I believe that one is from the "Sky Is Blue Research Facility" in Obviousville, Calif.

Sometime science is kind of scary, as in the recent discovery that up to 90 percent of everything in the universe is dark matter or dark energy and undetectable by our current instruments. That really raises a lot of questions, though it might explain where a lot of mysteriously absent things go, like socks in the dryer, campaign promises, the integrity of Wall Street bankers and those pesky weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Anyway, it's a safe bet that there is far more understanding of such issues by the young people who attend the scholarship workshop mentioned (it is a scientific fact that this segue is an all-time stinker) in the item below.

Scholarship workshop scheduled

Charles County Public Schools will hold a scholarship workshop, a two-hour, interactive session hosted by author Marianne Ragins from 9 a.m. to noon Nov. 21 at North Point High School.

The workshop is designed to help students complete the college scholarship search and application process, a school system press release said. Ragins is a one-time recipient of more than $400,000 in scholarship offers and author of "Winning Scholarships for College" and "College Survival & Success Skills 101." The workshop will cover resources to use to find scholarship opportunities; easy guidelines for writing essays with examples; helpful tips on using the Internet to research scholarships; an inside look at obtaining positive recommendations; helpful tips on how to stand out against other scholarship applicants; ways to highlight personality and achievements during interviews; and last-minute strategies helpful in obtaining funds for college.

The seminar is free and is open to county high school students, parents and guardians. Space is limited to 450 participants, and reservations are required. Go to www2.ccboe.com/instruction/scholarshipworkshop.cfm to register. Students who attend are eligible for the Ragins/Braswell National Scholarship. For more information, go to www.scholarshipworkshop.com.

Call 301-934-7309. North Point is at 2500 Davis Road in Waldorf.

College class to help charities

A communication class at the College of Southern Maryland is involved in a service learning project to help three local groups through a donation drive.

The collection continues through today for items to benefit a food pantry, military care packages and animal welfare.

The organizations which will benefit are Calvary Gospel Church in Waldorf, which supports deployed soldiers by mailing care packages; Pisgah Seventh-day Adventist Church in Bryans Road, which maintains a food pantry for low-income families; and St. Mary's Animal Welfare League in Leonardtown, which needs food, litter and treats to care for abandoned cats.

Items needed are used ink or toner cartridges, nonperishable food, disposable razors, wet and dry cat food, cat treats, clumping cat litter, small travel or sample-sized personal care products, hard candy and used books or magazines in good condition.

For information, e-mail service.learn@gmail.com or call 301-934-7868.

La Plata Lions holding annual fruit sale

The La Plata Lions Club annual fruit sale will take place at the La Plata United Methodist Church parking lot from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 5.

Navel oranges and ruby red grapefruits will be $17 for a 20-pound box. Fruit trays will be $24.

Preordered fruit can be picked up at the sale.

Call 301-934-3157, e-mail cdrogers3@verizon.net or go to www.orgsites.com/md/laplatalions/index.html.

Fossil club explores graves

The Calvert Marine Museum Fossil Club will hold a free public lecture at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 5 in the museum auditorium at 14200 Solomons Island Road in Solomons.

Join Bill Palmer as he presents "Mass Graves of the South Dakota Inner Sea."

Approximately 80 million years ago, periodic volcanic eruptions to the west of the South Dakota Inner Sea carpeted hundreds of square miles with ash, according to a museum press release.

Some of this area was purchased by the U.S. government in the 1960s because a vast number of fossils are found there in rock layers known as the Pierre Shale.

Some of the fossiliferous layers are more than 30 feet thick. These layers now preserve the skeletons of thousand of marine reptiles, pterosaurs — extinct flying reptiles — sharks and other fishes.

The lecture is sponsored by the Clarissa and Lincoln Dryden Endowment for Paleontology, and is free and open to the public. Membership in the Fossil Club is open to members of the Calvert Marine Museum Society; annual dues are $10.

Call Stephen Godfrey, CMM's curator of paleontology, at 410-326-2042, ext. 28.

jdavis@somdnews.com