I decided my girlfriend should take on a project that was at the time
fascinating to me undersea turbines and elliptical wave generator. I
built the models in an aquarium with a motor to generate waves and
currents. My girl friend didn't really know what I was building but
she would sit by me and talk to me while I put together a rather
snappy looking project. Her job was to learn what the diorama
demonstrated and to make really good looking posters for the fair. I
am no artist or even a handwrit-ist she had the easy flowing poster
script that girls seem to be trained in at a very young age. She did
a really good job of all of the signs and she could cover the
highlights of the technology being demonstrated so we were in
business. The only problem, at this point, was that I had spent all
of my time making Van de Graaffs and undersea turbines that I only
had a day and a half to build my project. I made a hydroelectric dam
with a pump and generator that was honestly not quality work but I
had not planned well. All that was left was to get them to the school
and go through the obligatory trumping of the locals at the school
wide science fair. It was a massacre, there were three spots from our
school to go to the state competition and the kid to the left of my
friend and girlfriend and I was shocking a He-Man figure in a model
electric chair. The other paint eaters around the room had posters or
crude models and my nervousness about not being the three selected to
go to state dissipated and we just waited to get our awards. We were
all three selected to represent our school at the state finals and so
we did.
