Thou Shall Not Bear False Hypothesis (Continued)
By: Kase D. Johnstun
We moved from grandma’s house to grandpa’s garage and plugged away at the construction of the tunnel, and an hour after lunch, the model in front of us mimicked the general structure of the wind tunnels of NASA.
“Grandma!” I yelled.
She poked her head out through the door of garage and answered, “Goddamnit Kelly, Johnny, Judd, Jake, augh whoever ever the hell you are, yahoodie! You scared the shit out of me. What the hell are you yelling for?”
“We need a toy,” I said.
“Then get a toy. What the hell do you need me for?” she asked.
“We need a toy like a plane,” I said.
“I’ll be right back.” She headed into the house to find her stash of 40 years’ worth of toys left around by, and for, children and grandchildren.
“Clean it all up while we’re waiting,” grandpa said. He never rested or let his grandsons rest. Every minute had to be used to clean, mow, weed eat, sand, or wash. I scurried around his garage, placed tools into outlines drawn on the wall, hurried to grab a broom and pick up any particles that had dropped on the floor, and looked for anything out of place to put away.
The door from the kitchen to the garage swung open again and without even trying to nail down a name, my hobbling grandma said, “Hey yahoodie, will this work?” She held a plastic red and white medevac helicopter in her hand. “Damn thing never worked liked it was supposed to,” she cursed through her bobbing dentures. I don’t understand how she thought it was supposed to work. The tiny helicopter didn’t have batteries. It wasn’t supposed to be remote controlled. It was just what it was – a tiny plastic helicopter.
“Do you have a plane?” I asked while looking down at the helicopter.
“We might,” she said.
Grandpa looked up at my grandma and then down at the helicopter in my hand, “This will work, Della.”
“Thanks, Grandma,” I said, taking my cue.
Within moments, the helicopter was attached to the casing by rubber bands at four spots and floated in the middle of the wind tunnel. We placed a tiny house fan at one end.
“Thank you, Gramps,” I said.
And I left.
That next Tuesday I stood by Avak. The helicopter looked great suspended in hypothetical flight in the direct center of the three-foot-long tunnel. The fan at the end of the tunnel blew air through it. The air made the tiny model bounce up and down and turned the four helicopter blades uniformly in the musky hallway next to the boy’s bathroom.
The fancy display board built on the same day as the wind tunnel sat behind the precisely-built miniature model that represented what engineers had used for decades to test the stability and structure of flying devices before letting them leave the ground. I had gone to the greatest lengths to fill every side of the display board with information about the use of wind tunnels, how NASA tested space shuttles, and how engineers found structural flaws.
Photos of wind tunnels depicted their evolvement since their initiation into the advanced-flight engineering field. The photos began in black and white and eventually became more colorful, each with engineers standing in front of them with clipboards and giant suspended planes in the middle of the backdrop.
Bring on the judges. Bring on Mrs. Beggar. Bring on Avak. Okay, not Avak. I had planned. I had prepared. I had built. I had created a true exhibit to be displayed beneath the crosses in the hallways of St. Joseph Catholic Elementary. All I needed were judges to judge and a speech for my third place award.
THEY finally arrived at the stand. Two different judges from the year before stood near our table. The male judge wore his Air Force dress uniform. His badges created a large stack on his chest. He stood tall with square shoulders, but once you got past the uniform and posture, he smiled deeply. Wrinkles formed upward from the edges of his mouth. The female judge wore a pant suit and held her clipboard tight to her chest.
The helicopter inside bounced up and down.
“So what is the purpose of your project?” One judge asked.
“To make sure there aren’t any flaws in the aircraft before scientists take it out for a real flight,” I said. I pointed to the photos of all the different tests made on planes. My pointing finger led them through the steps scientists make to ensure safety. I talked briefly about how NASA used wind tunnels on all the spacecraft to simulate leaving the earth’s atmosphere.
“This is a very impressive model you have built. Did you do it yourself?” One judge asked.
“Nope. My grandpa helped me,” I said.
At that moment, I felt something science had never given me before – excitement. The judge used the word “impressive” when he talked about the model. The joy started to snowball. I wanted more and more questions like the ones they had been asking because I had all the answers. Instead of reading just one line from an encyclopedia, I had actually done a lot of research and it took a full day to build the tunnel. The stand even swiveled. A hypothesis sheet existed. A scientific steps sheet shone. Instead of lying to get through questions, I had true answers.
Bring it on, judges.
“I have spent a lot of years in the military, and I really like your project. Did you build the model helicopter yourself and test it for flaws?” he asked with a small excitement in his voice. The tiny model helicopter in the middle of the glued-together hollow buckets bounced. A sticker on the side of the door clearly said Mattel. The copter was bright red plastic and obviously made in China or Indonesia.
I looked up at his eyes, and with everything I had gained throughout this whole experience and with all the hard work I put into the project and the pride I gained by working with my grandpa, I knew there was only one answer.
“Yes!”
They didn’t buy it.