21 Measuring Results

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Measuring Results Centimeter (noun). A unit of length. It's 1/100 of a meter and about 2/5 of an inch. It's part of the metric system, which is based on the power ten. Two, four, six, eight who do we appreciate—ten! IN THE LAB, I SEARCHED under the tables. Birdie crept into the room and knelt next to me. "Any luck?" she asked. "Nope. This is all I've found." I opened my hand to reveal an eraser, a bubble gum wrapper, and a piece of lint. I nodded over at Ms. Daly, who was rummaging through desk drawers. She looked up. "So far, I've found this." She held a thick black calculator with a large silver screen. "But it's a graphing calculator." "It will require way too many lemons," I moaned. "We probably can get your mom to open up the front office," said Ms. Daly. "Maybe there's a calculator in there that might work." I didn't like the idea of bothering my mom, but...

"Tell her," whispered Birdie. "About the person sabotaging you." "I don't want to be a tattletale," I whispered back. "At this point, she should know. It's not like you're the one who loses stuff." She half smiled. "That would be me." I let out a breath. "You're right." I walked over to Ms. Daly and started to explain what really happened. Midway through as I explained the part about Kate is bad at science, I realized that Dr. Caroline was standing in the doorway. Dr. Caroline! I closed my mouth. "Keep going," Dr. Caroline said. "Don't let me stop you. I think it's great to be up-front and honest. And it really makes me sad that someone is completely misunderstanding the point of STEM Night. It's not about winning. It doesn't make you better to put someone down. And it certainly doesn't make your project better, if you make some else's project worse." Dr. Caroline dug her hands down in her lab coat pockets. "It's wrong, Kate," said Ms. Daly. "I'm also glad you said something." "I wish I could do something to help," said Dr. Caroline, her voice full of concern.

That's when I told them about the fingerprints we found using the cocoa powder. Why we were definitely sure that it was someone else. "Because we tested them. Those prints weren't mine." "I wish we could identify the student from their fingerprints," said Dr. Caroline. "I think it's important that they learn from this." "I know how to catch the person," said Birdie. "I figured it out because of my ink chromatography experiment. All we would have to do is take the poems off the wall and test the four poems that used blue ink." "I think we can do that," said Ms. Daly. "I'll just check in with Mrs. Eberlin." I looked at Birdie. "Thank you," I whispered. "We haven't caught them yet," she said. "But we will!" After Ms. Daly received a text from Mrs. Eberlin with the go-ahead, Birdie took the four poems and with scissors carefully cut out a strip on the very bottom where Mrs. Eberlin had us write the date. The date was about a centimeter from the end of the strip. I like to measure in centimeters because that's how scientists measure stuff—using the metric system. Birdie hung the strips in the middle of four pencils. "I need four beakers."

"On it," said Ms. Daly, who popped back with four plastic beakers. "Ah," she said. "I think I see where you're going. Continue." She deposited the four beakers on the table. "Kate, can you fill the beakers with ten milliliters of water?" asked Birdie. "The water is our solvent." "On it," I said, running to the science lab to grab a graduated cylinder. I sprinted back to the classroom before carefully filling up the beakers. I set them on the table in front of Birdie. She placed one pencil across each of the four beakers. The bottom of the strip just touched the water. "See, I'm going to let the ink get wet just like I did in my science project." We watched in amazement as the ink separated. It took about five minutes. "The color patterns are all different," she said. "Let's compare them to the patterns made from the Kate is bad at science test strip." We all stared. We had a match.