Family Daze

In science fairs, it's OK to fool Mother Nature

By Debbie Farmer

Wouldn't you know it, just when everything was going along so well, someone at my daughter's school decided it's time for the science fair. For those of you who don't have school-aged children, don't let the name deceive you. It is nothing like a fair at all. Someone just picks a date and then sends a flier home saying that you need to have a science project set up with a hypothesis, conclusion and all that, ready almost immediately.

Now, normally, I'm all for parental involvement in education, but it's times like these I wonder why, with all those years of college training, there isn't someone more qualified at the school to teach my child about science than me.

Now before you start yelling, I want you to know that I am a fan of science and public education, but I'm the type of person who likes having a little mystery in my life. I don't need to know why the lights turn on, what makes the car move or how the television works to be happy. I prefer to just go through my day thinking of it all as small miracles taking place around me. But apparently the school district feels it's time I changed my ignorant ways and faced scientific facts.

Of course I have nothing against family projects, but we've done so many of them in my daughter's three years in school I've begun to base my calendar on them. I remember her stint in first grade only as "the year of the diorama." I learned that almost anything can be cut out and glued inside a shoe box for extra credit. I stuffed a whole cardboard solar system inside of a Birkenstock box and made a miniature replica of the first Thanksgiving dinner, along with a set of wooden clothespins dressed up as Pilgrims and Indians, inside the Armani box for my good leather pumps.

Fortunately, since I am a veteran of so many school projects, I am acutely aware of my limitations. As I scanned the sheet of suggested experiments, I immediately crossed out anything that required batteries, materials I couldn't pronounce or small animals. Then I went back and deleted anything that looked too complicated or potentially dangerous. That left us with one choice: the colored flower experiment. It was perfect. All we would have to do is put a couple of white carnations in vases of red and blue water and, with a little luck, they would drink the water through their stems and the petals would turn those colors.

We set up the project with a blend of optimism and enthusiasm that all family projects start with. Then we put each flower into the blue and red colored water and left them alone to do their thing. However, when we checked them a day later we found that, and this may come as a big surprise to some of you, there was no change whatsoever. It was obvious that Mother Nature did not know how important the grade for the science fair was. So I added more food coloring to the water to speed up the process. But when there was still no change, it was clear I needed outside help.

"Maybe you could put the food coloring right on the petals," my husband said.

My sympathetic friend Julie, whose children are safely out of the family project stage, suggested we switch the flowers with some colored silk carnations from the craft store. But deep down I knew I couldn't get away with it. Besides, what kind of message would that be to my daughter?

Then on the day of the fair, just when I was ready to chuck the entire experiment and make a diorama of the water cycle, a miracle happened: there was a hint of color on the edge of one of the petals. Believe me, I am just as shocked as you are.

We whisked the flowers off to school and displayed them with the other projects: an exploding volcano, a battery made out of an orange and, although I could be wrong about this, live penicillin. Needless to say, with the quality of these projects, I was surprised someone hadn't come up with the cure for cancer. But that's OK. At least we finished the assignment, and I had a few days to recover before the next family project. I just hope it's a diorama.

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Debbie Farmer can be contacted at familydaze@home.com.

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