7 A Fruitful Search

CHAPTER SEVEN A Fruitful Search Power (noun). How fast energy is transferred from one spot to another. The faster something gets transferred, the more power. So, think of it as a faster runner in a race having more power than a slowpoke. "THIS IS GOING TO BE SO COOL," I said, fiddling with the arms of Liam's robot. "I'm using a piece of fruit to power up my little brother's favorite toy." I moved the little levers. Everyone in my STEM group leaned forward for a better look. "Whoa! That's amazing," exclaimed Memito. "Thanks." I hadn't tried out the battery yet and was eager to get started. I couldn't believe how far ahead both Phoenix and Memito were. And Birdie and Avery, too, from the looks of it. I didn't like feeling behind. As Avery walked by to sharpen her pencil, she studied the lemon and then the robot. "Is that really going to work?" she asked. "Oh yeah!" I promised. Ms. Gottfried strode closer to get a close-up on the lemon. Turning, I gave her my best smile.

第七章卓有成效的搜索能力（名词）。 能量从一个点转移到另一个点的速度。 东西传递得越快，能量就越大。 所以，把它想象成比赛中跑得快的人比跑得慢的人更有力量。 “这太酷了，”我说，摆弄着利亚姆机器人的手臂。 “我在用一块水果给我弟弟最喜欢的玩具充电。” 我移动了小杠杆。 我的STEM小组里的每个人都倾身向前，想看得更清楚。 “哇!这太不可思议了。” “谢谢。”我还没有试用过电池，所以急于开始使用。 我简直不敢相信凤凰城和Memito都领先这么远。 还有伯蒂和艾弗里，看起来也是。 我不喜欢落后的感觉。 艾弗里走过去削铅笔的时候，她研究了一下柠檬，又研究了一下机器人。 “这真的有用吗？”她问。 “噢,是的!”我承诺。Ms。 戈特弗里德大步走近，想近距离观察柠檬。 转过身来，我给了她最美好的微笑。

"My dad calls his car a lemon," said Jeremy. "But turning an actual lemon into a battery? That doesn't seem possible." "Come closer." I motioned to Ms. Gottfried. "See. I'm going to get this battery started." I pushed a shiny nail into one side of the lemon. It didn't puncture the skin until I jammed it in with a good shove. "It's coated in zinc." I waved a piece of wire. "My mom helped me cut a piece of this." I pushed it in easy peasy. "The wire is copper. You can also use an old penny. See, the zinc wants to wave bye-bye to the electrons. And the copper wants to collect them. When the electrons zip along—you get electricity. Which is going to power up this little robot." I patted the lever-like arms. From a nearby table Rory hooted, "Go robot power!" And I heard Birdie cheering, too. Using alligator clips, I connected the zinc nail and copper wire to the place where the old battery had been in the robot. "Let me zoom in on this," said Ms. Gottfried. "All right," I said. "Ready, get set! Go!" Nothing. The robot didn't budge. "Maybe I put the positive side on the negative side," I said. "The red goes on the positive. And the black goes on the negative."

“我爸爸说他的车是柠檬，”杰里米说。 “但是把一个真正的柠檬变成电池呢？ 这似乎是不可能的。” “过来。”我向她示意。 戈特弗里德。”看到。我要把电池发动起来。” 我把一颗闪亮的钉子插进柠檬的一边。 直到我使劲把它塞进去，它才刺破皮肤。 “它涂了一层锌。”我挥动一根铁丝。 “我妈妈帮我切了一块这个。” 我轻而易举地把它推了进去。 “电线是铜的。你也可以用旧硬币。 看，锌想和电子挥手说再见。 铜管想要收集它们。 当电子快速移动时，就会产生电。 这将为这个小机器人提供动力。” 我拍了拍那杠杆般的手臂。 罗里在旁边的一张桌子上喊道：“加油，机器人力量！”我也听到小鸟在欢呼。 我用鳄鱼夹把锌钉和铜线连接到机器人原来放旧电池的地方。 “让我放大一下，”她说。 戈特弗里德。“好吧，”我说。 “准备，准备！”去吧!”什么都没有。 机器人没有动。“也许我把积极的一面放在了消极的一面上，”我说。 红色代表正极。 黑色在底片上。”

Avery whirled around from the table next to ours. "Do you have them on correctly?" She puckered her lips, which were blueberry blue from her lip gloss demo. "I know I did the battery right." I gritted my teeth. "You'll figure it out," said Elijah. "I sure hope so," I murmured. "I'm going to go over and take some photos of the other projects," said Ms. Gottfried. "Okay." I smiled but inside I felt like such a fool. My cheeks warmed. "I can't believe it didn't work." Taking a deep breath, I tried to relax. "Let's meet over by my desk," said Ms. Daly in a gentle voice. I dragged over to Ms. Daly, whose desk was more like a counter in the front of the lab. "Kate, what do you think happened?" she asked. "Maybe it's a bad lemon. I read that before you stick in the copper and the zinc, you're supposed to squeeze the lemon. I forgot!" "Okay," said Ms. Daly. "Did you think about how much power it takes to start a motor on a robot though?"

艾弗里从我们旁边的桌子上转过身来。 “你戴对了吗？”她噘起嘴唇，这是她的唇彩演示的蓝莓蓝。 “我知道我的电池是对的。” 我咬紧牙关。“你会明白的，”以利亚说。 “我当然希望如此。”我喃喃地说。 “我要过去拍一些其他项目的照片。” 戈特弗里德。“好吧。”我笑了，但内心却觉得自己像个傻瓜。 我的脸颊暖和起来。“我不敢相信它竟然没有成功。” 我深吸了一口气，试着放松下来。 “我们在我的桌子旁见吧，”史密斯女士说。 戴利温柔地说。我慢吞吞地走到mrs。 戴利的桌子更像是实验室前面的一个柜台。 “凯特，你觉得发生了什么？”她问。 “也许这是一个坏柠檬。我读到过，在你把铜和锌放进去之前，你应该挤一下柠檬。 我忘了!”“好的。” 戴利。“你想过启动机器人的马达需要多少能量吗？”

"No," I admitted. "I didn't even think about that. I should have probably tested how much power I needed." "That's what I wanted to show you." Ms. Daly grabbed a small black machine off a shelf above her desk. "I have a voltmeter. We can test the voltage of your battery." "That's awesome!" I had no idea that even existed. I wanted to borrow it and test the power of everything! Ms. Daly placed the red probe tip on the copper. "Now you put the black probe tip on the zinc." After I touched the black probe to the nail, the screen of the voltmeter read 0.912 V. "Probably not enough energy to power the robot," I said. "Is the V for volts?" "Yup." Ms. Daly closed her eyes as if counting in her head. "If my math is correct, it would take over one thousand lemons to get that robot moving. You're going to need a lot more juice, if you want it to run." I let out a low chuckle at Ms. Daly's corny joke. But inside, I was kicking myself for not thinking this through. I definitely needed to find something that used a lot less electricity than this robot. But what? My eyes scanned the items on Ms. Daly's

“不，”我承认。“我想都没想过。 我应该测试一下我需要多少能量。” “这就是我想给你看的。” 戴利从桌子上方的架子上拿了一台黑色的小机器。 “我有一个电压表。我们可以测试你电池的电压。” “太棒了!”我都不知道还有这个。 我想借它，试试万物的力量！Ms。 戴利把红色的探针尖放在铜上。 “现在你把黑色的探针尖放在锌上。” 我把黑色探头碰到钉子后，电压表的屏幕显示为0.912 V。 “可能没有足够的能量来驱动机器人，”我说。 “V代表伏特吗？”“是的。” 戴利闭上眼睛，好像在心里数数。 “如果我没算错的话，需要1000多个柠檬才能让机器人动起来。 如果你想让它跑起来，你需要更多的电。” 我轻声地笑了笑。 戴利的陈腐笑话。但内心深处，我后悔自己没有把这件事想清楚。 我一定要找个比这个机器人耗电少得多的东西。 但是什么?我的眼睛扫视了一下女士身上的物品。 戴利的

desk. I spotted a simple-looking calculator. "Could I use that?" "Of course," said Ms. Daly. "Thank you so much." I waved the calculator in the air and called out to my group as I headed back to the table. "You guys, I'm going to use my lemons to fire up a calculator." I tried to sound happy but I was more than a weensy bit disappointed. A calculator was definitely not as cool as a robot. It might even be a little bit boring. "I guess I really should have tested this"—I pointed to the lemon—"out first." "You know what they say," said Jeremy. "It's always best to test." "Who is they?" asked Phoenix. Jeremy thumped his chest. "Me!" When he did that, my lemon knocked to the floor into a pile of sticky dirt that had fallen out of Phoenix's project earlier. Groaning, I pulled the zinc and copper out of the lemon. "When you get a lemon," I said, "sometimes you just have to make lemonade." Then I squashed the lemon under my foot, which felt good. I couldn't help feeling a little upset at the lemon, even though

桌子上。我发现了一个看起来很简单的计算器。 “我能用这个吗？”“当然。” 戴利。“非常感谢。” 我在空中挥舞着计算器，朝我的团队喊了一声，然后回到桌子旁。 “伙计们，我要用我的柠檬来启动计算器。” 我努力装出高兴的样子，但我非常失望。 计算器肯定没有机器人那么酷。 它甚至可能有点无聊。 “我想我真的应该先试试这个，”我指着柠檬说，“先拿出来。” “你知道他们是怎么说的，”杰里米说。 “测试总是最好的。” “他们是谁？”菲尼克斯问。 杰里米捶打着胸膛。“我!”当他这么做的时候，我的柠檬撞到了地板上，掉进了一堆黏糊糊的泥土里，那是早些时候从菲尼克斯的项目上掉下来的。 我呻吟着，把锌和铜从柠檬里抽出来。 “当你有柠檬的时候，”我说，“有时候你只需要做柠檬水。” 然后我把柠檬踩在脚下，感觉很好。 我还是忍不住对柠檬有点不高兴，尽管

it wasn't its fault that it didn't generate enough juice to power the robot. Then I scooped up the lemon, wiped up its juice with my sleeve, and tossed it into the trash. Phoenix's mouth dropped open. "Kate, why did you do that?" She pointed to the wastebasket. Then she took the lemon out again and added it to her composting project. At least the lemon would get to be part of STEM Night one way or another. "Don't give up, Kate," said Ms. Daly from the next table, where she was helping Rory with his cloud experiment. "I won't," I said, even though I wasn't feeling super excited about powering up a calculator. I thought about real scientists. Real scientists did not give up. They did not squash lemons. It took Thomas Edison over a thousand tries to invent the light bulb. So I refused to be droopy about all of this. "It's okay, I have a bag of fresh lemons in the back. I'll get another one." With the calculator in my hand, I raced to the side counter next to the sink where I had stored a bag of extra lemons. Only I didn't see the bag, so I checked the glass cabinet above. No bag. I checked again. I opened some drawers. Not there either. My

它没有产生足够的能量来驱动机器人，这不是它的错。 然后我舀起柠檬，用袖子擦干它的汁水，扔进了垃圾桶。 凤凰的嘴张得大大的。 “凯特，你为什么要那样做？”她指着废纸篓。 然后她又把柠檬拿出来，加入到她的堆肥计划中。 至少柠檬会以某种方式成为STEM之夜的一部分。 “不要放弃，凯特。” 戴利从邻桌过来，她正在帮罗里做云实验。 “我不会的，”我说，尽管我对启动计算器并没有感到特别兴奋。 我想到了真正的科学家。 真正的科学家不会放弃。 他们没有压柠檬。 托马斯·爱迪生尝试了一千多次才发明了电灯泡。 所以我拒绝对这一切垂头丧气。 “没关系，我后面有一袋新鲜柠檬。 我再去拿一个。”我手里拿着计算器，跑到水池旁边的柜台，我在那里放了一袋多余的柠檬。 只是我没看到袋子，所以我检查了上面的玻璃柜。 没有袋子。我又检查了一遍。我打开了一些抽屉。 那里也没有。我的