Science Fair News
The Lawton Science Fair is going to be March 24 in the evening at the school. Mark your calendars.
Not sure what K is going to do this year, but M is going to do something with electronics. More details to follow, but you might have to wait until March 24 to find out...
Two years ago was the last Science Fair, and while I was organizing it, a parent called to say her son was going to cancel his entry because the experiment he was trying didn't work like they thought it would. Even when you're following a book, it can be difficult to get the same result because there are so many factors involved in experiments.
I encouraged her and her son to document their experiment and explain what worked and what didn't. Instead of concluding "It worked!" they could conclude "It didn't work!" and try to guess what went wrong. Scientists often fail to produce the correct results, and they have to try different things. Sometimes they fail because they're wrong, and they learn from it and try again a different way.
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Projects With Which I'm Still Not Done
I know you're wondering what happened to the ray gun I was working on last year. I have most all the parts for it now, but I'm not happy with one aspect of it, and I've changed my mind about a lot of it. I've been scrounging for parts at the Ann Arbor Reuse Center, and I've found a few things, but not what I'm looking for exactly. Patience is a virtue when building a ray gun, although one you have it built, it's OK to just blast the heck out of everything. At least, that is my understanding.
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Deep Stuff
You already know I like the Wondermark comic strip. Occasionally, the author, David Malki, will post other things, such as the progress he's making on his next book, what conventions he is attending, and so on. Yesterday, he got a little philosophical, but I really like his definition of an expert:
There are two types of “experts” in the world:
1. The ones that are happy to take your money to reassure you that they will HANDLE IT.
2. The ones that are just as nervous as you are.
Read the whole post, called "You Are Doing Fine", here.
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