Project Statement
Nov. 23rd, 2011 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsol"LaTanya?" Loomy frowned, hands on aproned hips. Where was that girl? She was always disappearing. Loomy stuck her head in LaTanya's bedroom but she wasn't there.
"LaTanya!" shouted Loomy again, irritated. It wasn't as if the apartment was large enough for a body not to hear her mama when she calls.
"I'm out here, mama," LaTanya called back. A sliding door opened onto the fire escape from LaTanya's bedroom; it was partway open. Loomy looked down at her daughter sitting cross-legged on the wrought-iron platform. She had a shoebox in her lap, full of LaTanya's junky things, and a cluster of helium balloons was tied up to the railing.
"Thought I told you not to hang around out here," grumbled Loomy. "This thing's rickety and you could fall to your death."
"I'm sorry, mama," said LaTanya. "But it's nice and cool out here."
It was, too. Loomy sniffed and brandished a piece of paper. "Found this in your book-bag," she said. "You have something due Friday, don't you?"
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya, hanging her head. "I have to turn in my Project Statement for Science Fair."
"Have you done it yet?"
"No, mama," said LaTanya ruefully. "I don't have any ideas for a good science project."
"You better think of one," Loomy advised her daughter.
"But it's hard," complained LaTanya. "The project statement has to be in the form of a Problem Statement, and then a Hypothesis, and a proposal to test your hypothesis. I can't think of any problems like that."
"I don't even know what all that means," said Loomy. "But you better get it in or you'll get a zero."
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya, subdued.
Loomy pursed her lips at her daughter. Sometimes LaTanya was so scatterbrained. "Well, come in and wash up," she said. "Dinner in five." She returned to the kitchen.
LaTanya reached into her shoebox and pulled out the carbolyzer. It was complete, finally; she had made it from a broken radio and an electric shaver, but she had needed a source of sulfuric acid and she had only just found an old car battery to tap it from.
LaTanya tied it to four balloons and released it. The carbolyzer would take in carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides and convert them to ozone that would be spewed out into the upper atmosphere. She had five others operating already, simultaneously cleaning up pollution and patching the ozone layer.
LaTanya brought her shoebox back inside and slid it under her bed. She sat on her covers and looked out the sliding window. Project Statement, Project Statement. Why did science have to be so hard?
LaTanya saw Mister Ramos at school the next day. Mister Ramos was LaTanya's science teacher. He was very nice. "Hi, Mister Ramos," said LaTanya brightly.
"Hi there, LaTanya," said Mister Ramos. He was changing out the water in the class terrarium. "Have you thought some more about the project you want to do?"
"Yes," said LaTanya. She sat down in a chair, exasperated. "Only, I'm kind of stuck."
Mister Ramos smiled. LaTanya was always a good girl – not the best student, but always eager and interested. "Maybe I can help you out," he suggested. "What kind of scientific stuff is fun for you?"
"Oh, all of it!" said LaTanya eagerly. "I like biology, chemistry, geology…."
"All of it," confirmed Mister Ramos, and LaTanya nodded. She hadn't gotten around to saying quantum chromodynamics, which was her favorite.
"Well, which ones do you have any questions about?" asked Mister Ramos. "I mean, things you've always wanted to know answers to?"
LaTanya frowned. That was the problem. Any time she had a question about anything, she thought hard about it for about five minutes, and then she didn't have a question anymore.
"I don't know," said LaTanya quietly. "I mean, I can't think of anything."
"Okay," said Mister Ramos. He sighed. "I can tell you're struggling, LaTanya, but I can't pick your project for you. Maybe you should go home tonight and open your science book to a random page, and use that to come up with an idea. Maybe when you have a general area of science to work with, I can help you figure out an experiment that could be fun. Does that sound all right?"
"I guess," said LaTanya. She was disappointed; she had hoped that she would know what she was doing. But now she would have to wait.
**
Later on it was recess. LaTanya was in the Kindergarten room. She was looking in the cage of the class hamster. A bunch of the smaller kids were clustered around LaTanya. She reached into the cage and carefully picked up Buster. Buster was limp and unmoving.
"Is he dead?" asked a very small boy, his eyes wide.
LaTanya held the hamster up to her ear and listened for breath. She palpated its belly. "Yes," she said. Some of the kindergartners started to cry.
"Can you make him better?" asked a girl. LaTanya had been successful with Buster three times already, which is why they had summoned her off the playground.
"I don't know," said LaTanya. "He's a pretty old hamster. But I'll try." She laid him on a desk near the electric pencil sharpener, pried the casing open and pulled out a wire. LaTanya turned anxiously to the Kintergartners.
"You might not want to watch this," she said. Some, but not all, of the children covered their eyes.
Five minutes later Buster was groggily moving around his cage. He had two Snoopy bandaids covering incisions on his midsection. The liquid in his water bottle was tinged slightly blue from the chemicals LaTanya had droppered into it. "Okay," said LaTanya, "I think I've blocked the oxidation process that's breaking down his RNA, and I've stimulated new tissue growth," she said. "But sooner or later he's going to grow tumors, and that'll get him too."
"Can you fix that?" asked a boy hopefully. "I don't want Buster to be dead."
"Sure," said LaTanya. "And don't worry. Buster never needs to die ever again." Comforted, the kindergartners dispersed.
Tamara skipped into the room. "Oh THERE you are," she said. Tamara was in LaTanya's class. She was a bigger girl with long cornrows bundled up in the hood of an oversized parka. "Whatcha doing?"
"Just checking out the hamster," said LaTanya. Tamara peered into the cage.
"Ew," she said. "He's smelly."
"That's the amides," said LaTanya, frowning. She didn't like Tamara. Nobody liked Tamara. She was too bossy and acted like she ran the place.
Tamara sized up LaTanya. "Mister Ramos says you don't have a lab partner," she said.
"That's true," said LaTanya. Most kids did Science Fair in pairs, but LaTanya didn't have many friends.
Tamara heaved a big, dramatic breath. "Well," she said, "I *was* going to do the project all by myself, but I guess we could do it together," she said. "As long as you were willing to do some of the work."
More like all of the work, thought LaTanya to herself. That would be Tamara's usual modus operandi. But, on the other hand, Tamara might have ideas for what to do. Hope began to stir inside her. If Tamara had just a single good idea for Science Fair, it would be worth it for LaTanya to do the whole thing. She wouldn't get a zero that way, at least.
"Maybe," said LaTanya. "I mean, that could be fun. What kind of project would we do?"
"Oh, I have that all worked out," said Tamara breezily. "It's an experiment in chemistry."
"That sounds exciting," said LaTanya, and meant it.
"What we would do," said Tamara, "is try to find out what kind of marshmallows blow up the biggest in the microwave."
"What kind of marshmallows?" LaTanya frowned, her mental transmission struggling to engage with this new input.
"Yeah," said Tamara. "You know, like the little tiny ones, or the big poofy ones, or even the ones in breakfast cereal. We'd put 'em in the microwave for sixty seconds with a ruler behind it and see which one inflates the biggest. Myself, I bet the big poofy ones would win, but if we could get one of those marshmallow chicks, like for Easter, those could probably get pretty big."
Crushing disappointment settled over LaTanya like a gray stormcloud. That was no experiment. There wasn't even really a question there. A Problem Statement requires an actual problem, LaTanya thought. And a Hypothesis requires a basis in reason, with sound scientific principles behind it.
"I don't think I want to team up after all," mumbled LaTanya. She fled the room.
"Don't you dare steal my science project idea!" Tamara shouted after her.
In his cage, Buster gingerly stepped back onto his exercise wheel. Gamely, he began to run.
**
Loomy found LaTanya in the bathroom. She was kneeling on the floor, splashing at some water in the tub. "Girl, what are you doing?" she demanded.
"Nothing, mama," said LaTanya, reflexively reaching for the shower curtain. She didn't want her mother to see her working on her birthday present.
"You better not be making a mess," warned Loomy. Her nostrils flared. "And what smells funny?"
"I spilled some shampoo," admitted LaTanya.
"You'd best be more careful," said Loomy. "You know they're awful proud of their shampoo at the Safeway; a new bottle costs five ninety-five. Make sure you save as much as you can."
"Yes, mama," promised LaTanya.
She exhaled as Loomy left the room. She had four soup cans in the bath, each full of a different color liquid. Loomy's birthday was coming up but of course LaTanya didn't have any money to buy her anything. Fortunately, the previous night she had been thinking as she dozed off that room-temperature atomic fusion should be trivially simple. She had a three-step process going to generate gold out of household materials. The final batch container, the Cream of Mushroom can, had tiny flecks of gold glimmering at the bottom. The bits were getting bigger by the second. LaTanya figured that by bedtime she ought to have a couple of good-sized nuggets. That would be worth a new bottle of shampoo.
LaTanya made sure the process was taking care of itself, then washed her hands in the sink and headed for her bedroom. Loomy ambushed her en route.
"You," she said. "Science Fair. Project Statement."
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya doggedly.
"Is it done?"
"No, mama."
Loomy took her by the shoulders and frog-marched her into her room. She steered her into the chair in front of the card table she used for a desk. Loomy found a piece of paper and a mostly-sharp pencil.
"You sit there," she said, "and write me a Science Fair Project Statement."
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya, quailing. She still didn’t have any ideas.
"And don't think you're getting any dinner until I see that it's done." Loomy looked at her daughter staring blankly at the paper, then clucked worriedly and returned to watch television.
All the exciting areas of scientific inquiry passed through LaTanya's head. String Theory. The Genesis of Life. The Origins of the Universe. All these things were interesting. But, unfortunately, none of these things were challenging. Numbly, LaTanya picked up the pencil and began to write. In fifteen minutes she brought the paper to her mother.
"Let me see that," said Loomy, putting on her half-glasses and reading what her daughter had written. Her eyes skimmed over the few lines, and her eyebrows rose.
"That's not too bad," Loomy admitted.
"Thanks," LaTanya said tonelessly.
"I think we even still have some big poofy marshmallows left," said Loomy, getting up from the couch. She touselled LaTanya's shaggy hair and gave her a squeeze.
"Good work, girl!" she said. "I knew you could do it."
LaTanya said nothing. The next morning, Friday morning, as she walked the five blocks to school, LaTanya balled up the piece of paper and threw it in the trash.
**
"Still nothing, huh?" said Mister Ramos. "You know it's due today, right?"
"I just can't think of anything," said LaTanya miserably.
Mister Ramos's heart went out to the girl. "Okay, we'll do this together right now," he said. "You'll be amazed how easy this is. Ready?"
LaTanya perked up. She got out a clean sheet of paper. "Ready!" she said.
"Okay," said Mister Ramos. "Did you watch TV last night?"
"A little," said LaTanya. She had been pretty busy finishing up with Loomy's birthday present, and also reconciling gravitation with the weak nuclear force.
"What did you watch?" asked Mister Ramos.
"I watched some of a Star Blasters movie," said LaTanya. "The second one."
"Good, a science fiction movie!" said Mister Ramos. "Tell me about something you saw in that movie."
"Okay," said LaTanya. "Uh, well, some ships were fighting a war, so they flew from one star to another…"
"Do you think that's possible?" asked Mister Ramos. "For ships to fly between stars?"
"Sure, I guess," said LaTanya. Personally, she thought crossing the vastness of the universe by passing through real space was a tremendous waste of time and energy, when opportunities for dimensional folding abounded, but whatever.
"Do you think," pressed Mister Ramos, "that someday people will visit other worlds?"
"Oh, definitely," answered LaTanya. She had gone to the moon once, when she was four. It was difficult and uncomfortable, and she had no desire to do that kind of thing ever again.
"See, here's the thing," said Mister Ramos. "A science project doesn't have to require actual experimentation. Your project can also be speculative. You can propose experimentation that may be beyond your ability to perform. In that kind of project, what's important is being creative, and doing lots of good thinking."
"Oh, that sounds great," gushed LaTanya. She thought most experimentation was a huge waste of time; almost always, if you thought hard enough about something, the answer would inevitably present itself through pure logic. She wished she had known that when she was four; it would have saved her a skinned knee on the Mare Imbrium.
Mister Ramos cocked his head. "What do you think the chances are," he asked, "that there's life on other planets?"
LaTanya frowned. "Life?" she echoed. "Like, any kind of life?"
"Whatever kind you can imagine," said Mister Ramos.
LaTanya blinked. "Oh, I'm sure it's there," she said. As far as she knew, every major body in the solar system had some kind of life. What she had read about the atmospheric composition of Venus demanded the existence of sulfur-fixing bacteria; images of Jupiter's great spot clearly revealed evidence of macrofauna in the outermost cloud layers. Even the moon had had simple protists lurking in the shade of crater walls.
"What would you say," said Mister Ramos, "about doing a speculative Science Fair project on the subject of whether there is life on other planets?"
A tremendous idea billowed up in LaTanya's mind. She swelled with excitement. Of course! She could consider the question: how can one prove that there is life on EVERY planet? Every planet in the universe? It would be a massive enterprise; she would have to gather a tremendous amount of data, build mathematical models. She might even have to visit a few planets, LaTanya thought sourly, but she was still caught up in the joy of her idea. It would be worth it.
Mister Ramos saw LaTanya smile. "I think you may have your project," he said.
"I think I might!" LaTanya agreed. It would be difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing she had ever done. And the whole thing would be due by Science Fair in March. Could she do it in time? She would have to.
Resolved in her course, LaTanya set pen to paper and began to write.
"LaTanya!" shouted Loomy again, irritated. It wasn't as if the apartment was large enough for a body not to hear her mama when she calls.
"I'm out here, mama," LaTanya called back. A sliding door opened onto the fire escape from LaTanya's bedroom; it was partway open. Loomy looked down at her daughter sitting cross-legged on the wrought-iron platform. She had a shoebox in her lap, full of LaTanya's junky things, and a cluster of helium balloons was tied up to the railing.
"Thought I told you not to hang around out here," grumbled Loomy. "This thing's rickety and you could fall to your death."
"I'm sorry, mama," said LaTanya. "But it's nice and cool out here."
It was, too. Loomy sniffed and brandished a piece of paper. "Found this in your book-bag," she said. "You have something due Friday, don't you?"
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya, hanging her head. "I have to turn in my Project Statement for Science Fair."
"Have you done it yet?"
"No, mama," said LaTanya ruefully. "I don't have any ideas for a good science project."
"You better think of one," Loomy advised her daughter.
"But it's hard," complained LaTanya. "The project statement has to be in the form of a Problem Statement, and then a Hypothesis, and a proposal to test your hypothesis. I can't think of any problems like that."
"I don't even know what all that means," said Loomy. "But you better get it in or you'll get a zero."
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya, subdued.
Loomy pursed her lips at her daughter. Sometimes LaTanya was so scatterbrained. "Well, come in and wash up," she said. "Dinner in five." She returned to the kitchen.
LaTanya reached into her shoebox and pulled out the carbolyzer. It was complete, finally; she had made it from a broken radio and an electric shaver, but she had needed a source of sulfuric acid and she had only just found an old car battery to tap it from.
LaTanya tied it to four balloons and released it. The carbolyzer would take in carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides and convert them to ozone that would be spewed out into the upper atmosphere. She had five others operating already, simultaneously cleaning up pollution and patching the ozone layer.
LaTanya brought her shoebox back inside and slid it under her bed. She sat on her covers and looked out the sliding window. Project Statement, Project Statement. Why did science have to be so hard?
LaTanya saw Mister Ramos at school the next day. Mister Ramos was LaTanya's science teacher. He was very nice. "Hi, Mister Ramos," said LaTanya brightly.
"Hi there, LaTanya," said Mister Ramos. He was changing out the water in the class terrarium. "Have you thought some more about the project you want to do?"
"Yes," said LaTanya. She sat down in a chair, exasperated. "Only, I'm kind of stuck."
Mister Ramos smiled. LaTanya was always a good girl – not the best student, but always eager and interested. "Maybe I can help you out," he suggested. "What kind of scientific stuff is fun for you?"
"Oh, all of it!" said LaTanya eagerly. "I like biology, chemistry, geology…."
"All of it," confirmed Mister Ramos, and LaTanya nodded. She hadn't gotten around to saying quantum chromodynamics, which was her favorite.
"Well, which ones do you have any questions about?" asked Mister Ramos. "I mean, things you've always wanted to know answers to?"
LaTanya frowned. That was the problem. Any time she had a question about anything, she thought hard about it for about five minutes, and then she didn't have a question anymore.
"I don't know," said LaTanya quietly. "I mean, I can't think of anything."
"Okay," said Mister Ramos. He sighed. "I can tell you're struggling, LaTanya, but I can't pick your project for you. Maybe you should go home tonight and open your science book to a random page, and use that to come up with an idea. Maybe when you have a general area of science to work with, I can help you figure out an experiment that could be fun. Does that sound all right?"
"I guess," said LaTanya. She was disappointed; she had hoped that she would know what she was doing. But now she would have to wait.
**
Later on it was recess. LaTanya was in the Kindergarten room. She was looking in the cage of the class hamster. A bunch of the smaller kids were clustered around LaTanya. She reached into the cage and carefully picked up Buster. Buster was limp and unmoving.
"Is he dead?" asked a very small boy, his eyes wide.
LaTanya held the hamster up to her ear and listened for breath. She palpated its belly. "Yes," she said. Some of the kindergartners started to cry.
"Can you make him better?" asked a girl. LaTanya had been successful with Buster three times already, which is why they had summoned her off the playground.
"I don't know," said LaTanya. "He's a pretty old hamster. But I'll try." She laid him on a desk near the electric pencil sharpener, pried the casing open and pulled out a wire. LaTanya turned anxiously to the Kintergartners.
"You might not want to watch this," she said. Some, but not all, of the children covered their eyes.
Five minutes later Buster was groggily moving around his cage. He had two Snoopy bandaids covering incisions on his midsection. The liquid in his water bottle was tinged slightly blue from the chemicals LaTanya had droppered into it. "Okay," said LaTanya, "I think I've blocked the oxidation process that's breaking down his RNA, and I've stimulated new tissue growth," she said. "But sooner or later he's going to grow tumors, and that'll get him too."
"Can you fix that?" asked a boy hopefully. "I don't want Buster to be dead."
"Sure," said LaTanya. "And don't worry. Buster never needs to die ever again." Comforted, the kindergartners dispersed.
Tamara skipped into the room. "Oh THERE you are," she said. Tamara was in LaTanya's class. She was a bigger girl with long cornrows bundled up in the hood of an oversized parka. "Whatcha doing?"
"Just checking out the hamster," said LaTanya. Tamara peered into the cage.
"Ew," she said. "He's smelly."
"That's the amides," said LaTanya, frowning. She didn't like Tamara. Nobody liked Tamara. She was too bossy and acted like she ran the place.
Tamara sized up LaTanya. "Mister Ramos says you don't have a lab partner," she said.
"That's true," said LaTanya. Most kids did Science Fair in pairs, but LaTanya didn't have many friends.
Tamara heaved a big, dramatic breath. "Well," she said, "I *was* going to do the project all by myself, but I guess we could do it together," she said. "As long as you were willing to do some of the work."
More like all of the work, thought LaTanya to herself. That would be Tamara's usual modus operandi. But, on the other hand, Tamara might have ideas for what to do. Hope began to stir inside her. If Tamara had just a single good idea for Science Fair, it would be worth it for LaTanya to do the whole thing. She wouldn't get a zero that way, at least.
"Maybe," said LaTanya. "I mean, that could be fun. What kind of project would we do?"
"Oh, I have that all worked out," said Tamara breezily. "It's an experiment in chemistry."
"That sounds exciting," said LaTanya, and meant it.
"What we would do," said Tamara, "is try to find out what kind of marshmallows blow up the biggest in the microwave."
"What kind of marshmallows?" LaTanya frowned, her mental transmission struggling to engage with this new input.
"Yeah," said Tamara. "You know, like the little tiny ones, or the big poofy ones, or even the ones in breakfast cereal. We'd put 'em in the microwave for sixty seconds with a ruler behind it and see which one inflates the biggest. Myself, I bet the big poofy ones would win, but if we could get one of those marshmallow chicks, like for Easter, those could probably get pretty big."
Crushing disappointment settled over LaTanya like a gray stormcloud. That was no experiment. There wasn't even really a question there. A Problem Statement requires an actual problem, LaTanya thought. And a Hypothesis requires a basis in reason, with sound scientific principles behind it.
"I don't think I want to team up after all," mumbled LaTanya. She fled the room.
"Don't you dare steal my science project idea!" Tamara shouted after her.
In his cage, Buster gingerly stepped back onto his exercise wheel. Gamely, he began to run.
**
Loomy found LaTanya in the bathroom. She was kneeling on the floor, splashing at some water in the tub. "Girl, what are you doing?" she demanded.
"Nothing, mama," said LaTanya, reflexively reaching for the shower curtain. She didn't want her mother to see her working on her birthday present.
"You better not be making a mess," warned Loomy. Her nostrils flared. "And what smells funny?"
"I spilled some shampoo," admitted LaTanya.
"You'd best be more careful," said Loomy. "You know they're awful proud of their shampoo at the Safeway; a new bottle costs five ninety-five. Make sure you save as much as you can."
"Yes, mama," promised LaTanya.
She exhaled as Loomy left the room. She had four soup cans in the bath, each full of a different color liquid. Loomy's birthday was coming up but of course LaTanya didn't have any money to buy her anything. Fortunately, the previous night she had been thinking as she dozed off that room-temperature atomic fusion should be trivially simple. She had a three-step process going to generate gold out of household materials. The final batch container, the Cream of Mushroom can, had tiny flecks of gold glimmering at the bottom. The bits were getting bigger by the second. LaTanya figured that by bedtime she ought to have a couple of good-sized nuggets. That would be worth a new bottle of shampoo.
LaTanya made sure the process was taking care of itself, then washed her hands in the sink and headed for her bedroom. Loomy ambushed her en route.
"You," she said. "Science Fair. Project Statement."
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya doggedly.
"Is it done?"
"No, mama."
Loomy took her by the shoulders and frog-marched her into her room. She steered her into the chair in front of the card table she used for a desk. Loomy found a piece of paper and a mostly-sharp pencil.
"You sit there," she said, "and write me a Science Fair Project Statement."
"Yes, mama," said LaTanya, quailing. She still didn’t have any ideas.
"And don't think you're getting any dinner until I see that it's done." Loomy looked at her daughter staring blankly at the paper, then clucked worriedly and returned to watch television.
All the exciting areas of scientific inquiry passed through LaTanya's head. String Theory. The Genesis of Life. The Origins of the Universe. All these things were interesting. But, unfortunately, none of these things were challenging. Numbly, LaTanya picked up the pencil and began to write. In fifteen minutes she brought the paper to her mother.
"Let me see that," said Loomy, putting on her half-glasses and reading what her daughter had written. Her eyes skimmed over the few lines, and her eyebrows rose.
"That's not too bad," Loomy admitted.
"Thanks," LaTanya said tonelessly.
"I think we even still have some big poofy marshmallows left," said Loomy, getting up from the couch. She touselled LaTanya's shaggy hair and gave her a squeeze.
"Good work, girl!" she said. "I knew you could do it."
LaTanya said nothing. The next morning, Friday morning, as she walked the five blocks to school, LaTanya balled up the piece of paper and threw it in the trash.
**
"Still nothing, huh?" said Mister Ramos. "You know it's due today, right?"
"I just can't think of anything," said LaTanya miserably.
Mister Ramos's heart went out to the girl. "Okay, we'll do this together right now," he said. "You'll be amazed how easy this is. Ready?"
LaTanya perked up. She got out a clean sheet of paper. "Ready!" she said.
"Okay," said Mister Ramos. "Did you watch TV last night?"
"A little," said LaTanya. She had been pretty busy finishing up with Loomy's birthday present, and also reconciling gravitation with the weak nuclear force.
"What did you watch?" asked Mister Ramos.
"I watched some of a Star Blasters movie," said LaTanya. "The second one."
"Good, a science fiction movie!" said Mister Ramos. "Tell me about something you saw in that movie."
"Okay," said LaTanya. "Uh, well, some ships were fighting a war, so they flew from one star to another…"
"Do you think that's possible?" asked Mister Ramos. "For ships to fly between stars?"
"Sure, I guess," said LaTanya. Personally, she thought crossing the vastness of the universe by passing through real space was a tremendous waste of time and energy, when opportunities for dimensional folding abounded, but whatever.
"Do you think," pressed Mister Ramos, "that someday people will visit other worlds?"
"Oh, definitely," answered LaTanya. She had gone to the moon once, when she was four. It was difficult and uncomfortable, and she had no desire to do that kind of thing ever again.
"See, here's the thing," said Mister Ramos. "A science project doesn't have to require actual experimentation. Your project can also be speculative. You can propose experimentation that may be beyond your ability to perform. In that kind of project, what's important is being creative, and doing lots of good thinking."
"Oh, that sounds great," gushed LaTanya. She thought most experimentation was a huge waste of time; almost always, if you thought hard enough about something, the answer would inevitably present itself through pure logic. She wished she had known that when she was four; it would have saved her a skinned knee on the Mare Imbrium.
Mister Ramos cocked his head. "What do you think the chances are," he asked, "that there's life on other planets?"
LaTanya frowned. "Life?" she echoed. "Like, any kind of life?"
"Whatever kind you can imagine," said Mister Ramos.
LaTanya blinked. "Oh, I'm sure it's there," she said. As far as she knew, every major body in the solar system had some kind of life. What she had read about the atmospheric composition of Venus demanded the existence of sulfur-fixing bacteria; images of Jupiter's great spot clearly revealed evidence of macrofauna in the outermost cloud layers. Even the moon had had simple protists lurking in the shade of crater walls.
"What would you say," said Mister Ramos, "about doing a speculative Science Fair project on the subject of whether there is life on other planets?"
A tremendous idea billowed up in LaTanya's mind. She swelled with excitement. Of course! She could consider the question: how can one prove that there is life on EVERY planet? Every planet in the universe? It would be a massive enterprise; she would have to gather a tremendous amount of data, build mathematical models. She might even have to visit a few planets, LaTanya thought sourly, but she was still caught up in the joy of her idea. It would be worth it.
Mister Ramos saw LaTanya smile. "I think you may have your project," he said.
"I think I might!" LaTanya agreed. It would be difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing she had ever done. And the whole thing would be due by Science Fair in March. Could she do it in time? She would have to.
Resolved in her course, LaTanya set pen to paper and began to write.
