Shine! by J.J. Grabenstein & Chris Grabenstein

Author:J.J. Grabenstein & Chris Grabenstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

Siraj has some sort of slanted triangular array of pegs where you pour marbles in the top and they make their random way down to bins on the bottom—bouncing right or left with every peg they hit.

“It’s a quincunx for probability distribution analysis,” says Siraj. “Since there is an equal chance of a marble bouncing left or right at each peg, the marble stacks in the bins below will, on average, form the classic bell-shaped curve of normal distribution.”

“Fantastic,” I say.

I dump a tub of marbles into the top. They do not end up in the “classic” bell-shaped curve Siraj and I were expecting. In fact, a few of them wind up at the far edges of the quincunx’s bottom rack.

“That’ll happen,” says Siraj. “Sometimes.”

I give him a quick tour of my crater creation exhibit.

“Awesome,” he says after he shoots a marble out of the Japanese robot’s belly to blast his own impact crater on the surface of my cake-pan moon.

I glance over at Ainsley’s trifold cardboard display. Her exhibit is titled “Gemstones: Earth’s Most Expensive Crystallized Minerals.” It appears to be a collection of her mother’s jewelry and some crystals she grew in a fridge with salt and food coloring.

When Ms. Oliverio and the other science fair judges come up our row of exhibits, Ainsley launches into a speech she reads off pink notecards about diamonds being “the most beautifully compressed carbon atoms imaginable” and rubies being red “because of our red-hot friend chromium.”

When it’s Siraj’s turn, he does a very dry, kind of mumbled recitation of probability formulas. He also sweats a lot.

“Very good, Siraj,” says Ms. Oliverio. “Piper?”

It’s my turn.

I tell the judges my top-line inferences. “The rounder the object hitting the moon, the faster an object is traveling, the farther away an object is from the moon, the larger the crater it creates.”

Then I let them take turns shooting marbles at my lunar-surface cake pan.

Ms. Oliverio loves the robot. “It reminds me of the way Nellie DuMont Frissé makes astronomy fun in her videos. I think she’d be impressed by your project, Piper.”

Could there be a higher compliment? No. There could not.

“Tim let me borrow the robot,” I tell the judges.

“Because he’s an excellent showman,” says Ms. Oliverio. “Good job, Piper.”

After the judges visit all the exhibits, we have to leave so they can deliberate.

The gym is still locked at three, when classes are over.

Dad’s waiting outside the doors. So is an eager and anxious crowd. Siraj has all his fingers crossed. Probably his toes, too. Emily is bobbing up and down on her toes like she has to go to the bathroom.

Ainsley looks like she’s ready to sign autographs.

“Have you guys heard anything?” asks Dad.

I shake my head. Siraj does the same. We’re both too nervous to speak.

“If the Hibbleflitts want a shot at the Excelsior,” says Emily, still bouncing up and down, “one of us has to win this thing!”

Finally someone inside unlocks the doors. We all race to our exhibits.

“Yes!” says Dad with a mighty arm pump.

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