The Reinvention of Edison Thomas by Jacqueline Houtman

Author:Jacqueline Houtman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Astra Publishing House

Fact Number 20 from the Random Access Memory of Edison Thomas: African elephants (Loxodonta africana) can communicate over long distances by making sounds that have a frequency below the range of human hearing.

On the way to school the next day, Eddy stopped at the intersection of Hatteras and Delaware to ponder his latest puzzle. He still didn’t know how to detect the position of a car to determine its velocity. He closed his eyes, inhaled, and tried to imagine he was on the beach. It was no use. How could he pretend he was at Rock Island when he kept hearing cars? There are no cars on Rock Island.

He stood on the sidewalk and watched the cars pass in front of him. Twenty-one cars went by, but only sixteen came to a complete stop. He looked at the cars and thought about radio waves, sound waves, and laser beams bouncing off the sides of the car. A metal detector might work, but Eddy wasn’t sure the distance between the curb and the car would be small enough for a detector to be effective.

Eddy jumped at the loud crunching sound as the tire of a car flattened an aluminum can. A light bulb turned on in his head. (Ever since he had seen a cartoon character get an idea by having a picture of a light bulb appear over his head, Eddy often saw that very same light bulb turn on in his head when he got a sudden great idea.)

Eddy had been thinking of electronic detection devices that would sense the presence of a car through the air. A simpler idea would be to use the weight of the car, to design something that would sense when the car ran over it.

Excited by his revelation, Eddy hurried along to school. When he got there, he removed the sticky note that said DORK from his locker door and discovered that the door was jammed. Once he managed to open the door, he saw the reason for the jam. It was jam. And ketchup. And mustard. And mayonnaise. The locker had been completely filled with condiment packets, which spilled onto the floor at his feet. He looked around to see if anyone had witnessed this condiment event, but luckily the hall was empty this early in the day.

Eddy didn’t want to spend another afternoon in detention, so he hurriedly picked up the packets and began shoving them into his backpack. His heart rate increased as his fight-or-flight response kicked in. He tried to fit all the packets into his backpack before students started to show up. Several of the packets had leaked, covering his history book with a pink mixture of ketchup and fat-free ranch dressing. He wiped the book clean with his sleeve.

… zinc, gallium, germanium, arsenic, selenium …

Eddy let out an audible squeak as someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“What did you do?” asked Justin.

Eddy exhaled forcefully. “I did not do anything. Somebody filled my locker with these things. They must have slid them through the ventilation slots.

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