12th Grade Science Expertise

My friend and I were discussing how much we hated doing science fair projects, "doing," in this sense, meaning "helping" our sons or daughters "do" their projects.

Neither one of us is scientifically inclined although we did some 12th grade science projects. In college, he majored in economics while I majored in beer mixers. Yet, through the incredible insensitivity of the public school system, we were required, years later and many brain cells poorer, to assist our offspring with science projects.

When your idea of "science" is turning on or off a light switch, it is sometimes difficult to come up with a project idea. Parents and, needless to say, their children, are so incompetent at this that my son's middle school actually held an evening seminar, complete with handouts and a slide show, to help our cue-ball-smooth brains form some sort of idea.

My friend and I, who lived in different parts of the country in those days and did not know each other, pondered long and hard to the point that small drops of blood formed on our foreheads. And then, independently, we came up with the same brilliant idea. Our project would be: How does temperature affect the bounce of a golf ball?

Keep in mind that these are two people who, between them, have 34 years of education. (He has 28; I have six, but they were six extremely rigorous years.) Another parent (certainly with major input from his eighth-grader) decided to learn how photosynthetic algae intubations affect the mesomorphic realignment of defibrillating horseshoe crabs. In May. Or something like that. (Guess who got the higher grade.)

Measuring the bounce of a golf ball at 12th grade science projects, you come up with when you have given up all hope of thinking of something better. But, as we compared notes, it turned out that there were certain subtle differences in the way we performed the experiment. For example, he boiled a golf ball. I did not do this out of fear that the golf ball would explode from the pot and ricochet around the house like some frenzied wad of Flubber. Many great scientific breakthroughs are stymied by this sort of timidity.

I, on the other hand, bribed a friend to cut open a golf ball with his table saw. (What? You think I'm stupid enough to do this myself?) The halved golf ball became the visual focal point of the science project, and I think it is what catapulted the final grade from a B- to a B. (In case you are tempted to try this at home, and I have no reason to believe that you would, be advised that the interior of a modern golf ball is remarkably uninteresting.)

Both of us stored golf balls in the freezer next to the lima beans and brussels sprouts. (All three have similar flavors and textures, it turns out. Which could be another science project: How does temperature affect the bounce of a zucchini?)

Then it came down to the "grunt" work of charting and graphing, which is where I handed the project over to my son, who, as you might imagine, was delighted to the point of escaping the house via a window.

So, clearly, science projects can be an important element in parent/child bonding if your idea of "bonding" is spending the remainder of your lives not speaking to each other.

Also, it can be amusing watching a boiled golf ball soar through the screen of your new plasma TV.