The Case of the Gasping Garbage (7 page)

I
t’s hard to believe that air can be so powerful. Tornadoes whirl trucks, houses, and people right off the ground! (Chickens, too!) Hurricanes knock over trees as if they were twigs.

But those are forces of nature, and everybody knows that tornadoes and hurricanes are powerful. How about something as little as your breath? Maybe your breath can blow out a few birthday candles, but could it hold up a truck?

Believe it or not, if you had
enough
of your breath, you
could
hold up a truck. When enough air is squished (compressed) into a limited space, such as a tire, it becomes very strong and can hold up a car or a tractor or a semitrailer.

Want to amaze your friends with your new-found knowledge? Practice the following activity first, and then ask your friends if they can lift a stack of books using just their breath. After they stop laughing, show them how it’s done!

MATERIALS

PROCEDURE

Set the stack of books on a table and hide the balloon under the books. Make sure the neck of the balloon is sticking out. Without removing the balloon, blow it up. Voilà!

Y
ou have been assigned a most mysterious case. The case of the … (gasp) …
Mysterious Black Dot!

The Scene
: You have assembled five black ballpoint pens. Although the pens are different brands, their inks look identical. While your back is turned, your friend draws a heavy dot (•) on a piece of white paper with one of the pens. (Why, you ask? Why would your friend do such a mysterious thing? Because you asked him to, that’s why.)

The Problem
: You do not know which pen he used.

The Mission
: Using chromatography, find out which pen your friend used.

MATERIALS

PROCEDURE

1.
Label the pens 1 through 5, using masking tape.

2.
Cut 5 strips of paper the same height as the beakers and 1/2 inch wide. Label the strips 1 through 5 across the top.

3.
Pour 1 tablespoon of alcohol into each beaker. (
CAUTION:
Alcohol is flammable, which means it can catch on fire easily. Keep it away from flame.)

For each pen, do steps 4 and 5, starting with pen #1 and strip #1:

4.
With pen #1, draw a heavy dot (•) one inch from the bottom of strip #1. The darker the dot, the better.

5.
Tape the top of strip #1 to pen #1, using clear tape. Hang the strip in the beaker by resting the pen across the mouth of the beaker. The bottom of the strip should dip in the alcohol, but the dot of ink should be
above
the alcohol.

6.
Cut out a strip of paper containing the mysterious black dot. Like the other strips, the black dot should measure one inch from the bottom of the strip. Label the top of the strip “M” for “mysterious.” Tape the strip to a spare pencil and hang in the sixth beaker of alcohol.

7.
Take a major break. (
MAJOR BREAK IDEAS:
Dust for fingerprints, clean your spy glasses, snoop around corners.)

8.
After 4 hours, remove the strips. Which ink matches the “mysterious” ink? Show your friend the evidence. Were you right? (When his mouth flaps open in surprise, say: “Aha! I knew it all along! You can’t fool me! Easy-schmeasy!”)

9.
Tape the dried strips into your lab notebook. This is your hard evidence.

10. IMPORTANT
: DO NOT pour the leftover alcohol down the drain. Instead, use a funnel to pour the alcohol into a clean, dry bottle. Label the bottle rubbing alcohol and ask an adult to safely store it for a future experiment.

DID YOU KNOW?

Did you know that the FBI uses chromatography to catch forgers? (A forger is someone who writes a fake document.) By testing the ink on a document, detectives can determine the type, the age, and even the manufacturer of the ink. (It is impossible for a document to be, say, fifty years old if the ink in the document was made just last year!)

LONG, LONG, LOOOOONG AGO …

The “art” of forgery is as old as ink, maybe older. Crooks throughout history have tried to fake just about anything and everything to make a buck. Forgeries can come in many different forms: paintings, books, sculptures, diaries, checks, identification cards, money …

Take money, for instance. Several hundred years ago, when paper money was just beginning to be used, banks produced “banknotes”—basically a handwritten piece of paper with the bank’s seal, telling the bearer of the note how much the note was worth. At any time, the bearer of the note could cash the note for coins, or could give the note to someone else to pay a debt. Of course, a banknote was easy to forge and crooks everywhere (if they could write!) tried their hand at forgery. The problem got so bad, banks quickly made banknotes (paper money) more elaborate, with intricate designs, special paper, special inks, colors, and so on. Today, it is nearly impossible to forge, let’s say, a United States twenty-dollar bill.

Oh, and by the way … do you know what happened to forgers who were caught trying to cash fake banknotes? They were put to death! Yikes!

TRY THIS
: If you can find one, look closely at a brand-new, crisp, U.S. twenty-dollar bill. Hold it up to the light. What colors do you see? How many people do you see? Are you sure? Look again—you should see two head shots, plus blues and pinks as well as the traditional green. Look also on the back of the bill. What do you see printed in the empty spaces on either side of the White House? Pretty cool, huh?

AT FIVE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING,
Drake and Nell stood at the water’s edge. Mist hung over the lake, and everything looked just a tad creepy.

“Ready, Scientist Nell?” asked Drake.

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Nell snapped on her life preserver, grabbed an oar, and climbed into the boat. They pulled away from shore, rowing and rowing, until they reached the center of the lake.

And there they lowered their secret weapon. Code 61….

“WELCOME TO THE GREATEST GHOST SHOW ON EARTH!”
Sloane waved her arms around and said, “Abracadabra! Presto chango! Hocus-pocus! Alakazam!”

Nothing.

And then, just as Nell was about to smugly cross her arms, there appeared …

… a ghost.

A chill swept up Nell’s spine as both the ghost and the wind began to howl.

“Oh, my gosh,” whispered Nell. “I can’t believe it. It’s real.”