8 EXPERIMENTS!

"I need to get home to Mom and my science journal, but let's think while we jog back." I puffed as Pip, Sassafras, and I all hurried. "Right now, the normal forest environment makes bips grow at a normal speed, but I need to find a way to make them super happy so they will grow super fast." I leapt over a fallen log. "I need to change only one thing in an experiment at a time," I continued, "but I also need to try different things. That means I need to run a few experiments. And we don't have much time… so I should try

to set them up all at once!" "All I know is that bips need roses," said Pip. "I've never seen them anywhere else." "OK, good." I hopped across a series of rocks. "What else do we know? Oh—they're green like a plant! Plants need sunlight, so I should try one experiment with light." "Do you think they're a kind of tiny plant?" Pip asked. "Good question. I mean, they're green, but they also had eyes, and I was pretty sure I saw them moving a bit… maybe some kind of plant- like bacteria?" I guessed as we burst through the trees and into my backyard. "Let's ask Mom!" Pip hopped onto my head, and we all crashed through the back door into the kitchen. I tossed my backpack to the side and kicked off my muddy shoes, calling out, "Moooooom!" Pip leapt from my head and gave my mom's cheek a hug, and Mom kissed his head. "What did you guys find out?" I grabbed my science journal and a pencil and we all sat down at the kitchen table. I told Mom what we knew so far about the bips, how I'd need to run some experiments to see if I could get

more bips to grow, and how we only had a few days left to figure it out. "Oh my, in that case—let's get started!" Mom said. "So, if bips are a kind of photosynthetic bacteria, what do you think they might need, Zoey?" "Photo-syn-thetic," I said slowly and then smiled. "That's the word you use when you're talking about how plants make their own food from the sun, right?" Mom grinned and nodded.

"OK," I said, "we should definitely do an experiment with sunlight. And if they might be a kind of bacteria, sometimes warming bacteria can make them grow faster… so maybe an experiment with temperature?" I wrote both ideas down in my journal. "Those sound great," said Mom. "Can you think of one more you might want to try…?" "Hmmm…" I tapped my Thinking Goggles. "Maybe water or… um, moisture? Because all living things need water?" "It sounds like you've got the experiment ideas covered. How about some help with materials?" Mom grabbed some large plastic containers from a kitchen drawer and set them on the table. "Do these look like they'll work?"

"Those are perfect!" I paused to think. "Mom? So far, we've only found one healthy rose. I don't want to take too many bips from it because it might get sick too. How many do you think I should use? If I take one leaf's worth for each experiment from different rose bushes, do you think that will be OK?" Mom looked at Pip. "What do you think?" "It sounds like we need to find some more healthy roses," Pip said. "I'll get my frog friends to scout the forest this evening, and then come back tomorrow morning and let you know if there are others." "Thank you, Pip!" I blew out a deep breath.

There just had to be more healthy roses somewhere. I gave Pip a gentle hug goodbye and went back to writing out the three experiments in my science journal.