My First Mystery Story

Chapter 1
A Mystery Car

Tim was in the middle of lunch, looking out the window at the landscape of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, when he heard the boom. He jumped up, and ran outside into the snow, just in time to see a red, cadillac-like flying car crashing through his living room where he was eating just seconds ago. Shocked, he collapsed to the snowy ground, unconscious.

About a week later, at the Center for Disease Control in Ohio, scientists had tracked a mysterious virus back to a recently destroyed cabin in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The virus made all animals it infected go insane and act like they had rabies for several days, before they turned black and started drinking blood. Whenever they met others of their kind, they melded together into one, larger model of one of them. An example of this is a that a turtle and an octopus with the disease were kept together in a cage and they mixed together, creating a black turtle with tentacles. Nobody knew where the virus came from. Some people believed it came from the past, but this was quickly dismissed by skeptics.

A few months later, a scientist called the CDC. He said, “I’ve got one of those creatures in my basement... -(static deleted)- ...come look before I’m infected... -(static deleted)- ... Bye!”

The scientists took several samples of the creature’s virus, and looked at records of virus’s and announced, to the astonishment of everyone, that the virus was from about 75 million years ago. Now, to figure out how it got here...

Chapter 2
The Detective

A detective named David worked for the CDC, and because he worked part time, was considered expendable. Because of this, he was chosen to go investigate the cabin with minimal disease protection equipment. When he got there, he discovered human footprints leading away from the house and a circular swirling vortex of purple floating above a pine tree in front of the ruins. He discovered it completely by accident, while climbing a tree to get a good look at the house. David was nearly at the top of the tree when a clawed hand grabbed him and pulled him up to the top of the tree. The last thing, he saw before he descended into blackness was the swirling vortex rushing up to meet him.

Look at Book 2 (Or post 2) to see more of this adventure!

Telescopes

Objective: To make a simple telescope and explore how it makes far away objects larger.

Predictions:

The two lenses are round and see through.

There are eight tubes.

I think the tubes are used to build the telescope.

I think I will be able to see three times farther with the telescope.

Observations:

To start our observations, we went to the EMU’s campus and compared looking at things with our eyes and looking at them with the telescope we had made.

First up, a sign. As you can see, the telescope allowed me to see the sign much better.

Next, one of those plastic windmills impaled on the bank of the pond.

Third, a patch of flowers.

Next, a canadian goose.

Fifth, a reed.

To see the night sky, unpolluted, we went to the University of Michigan’s Peach Mountain Observatory. We made a few comparisons between looking at the sky with our eyes and looking at it with telescopes.

With my eyes, I could nearly make out a square of stars in the sky.

With our little telescope, I could see this.

With my eyes, I could see this. (Jupiter above the red line, trees below)

Looking through a commercial telescope, I could see this. (Jupiter's moons are circled in red)

With my eyes, I could see this. (cloud circled in red)

Looking through a 24 inch telescope, I saw this. (24 inches is the diameter of the telescope)

Results:

Building the little telescope was very easy. I think that the commercial and large telescope that we used were much harder to put together than our little one.

My telescope starts out fuzzy when viewing things and gets fuzzier as you zoom in on anything. The commercial telescope had no such problems and was very easy to use. The large telescope was very hard to line your eye up with the view port and if you moved, you would lose the picture.

I was able to discern more detail with the telescope than without them.

Using the telescopes, I saw that Jupiter had multiple moons and that what looked like a cloud was actually a group of stars.

Conclusion:

Three things changed from when I looked at the objects with my eyes and when I looked at the objects with a telescope: light, colors, and space. 

The telescopes all had something in common, they all resolved what the stars look like.

Circles of Corners

Here is another work from the (rather messy) Lego workshop. Today it is a ring made out of Lego corner wall pieces.

The ring, as you can see, has an interesting star shape in the center of it.

It is a very strong connection. In the process of making it, I dropped it several times on the floor, but it did not break. Try it!

Circles and 3.14159

Today I made a Lego circle, the fueled by one my mom's comments on Desi, our dog, while he was spinning in circles. 

Here are pictures of the segments used to make the circle. Both pictures feature slightly different models for a highly functional bendable circle segment. The first picture shows the upper facing segment, and the second shows the lower facing segment.

P.S. Today our dog was spinning in circles, so my mom said, "If I ever get another dog, I'll name him 'About 22/7'.".

My Blog Future

For about the next year, my blog will become less and less Lego oriented and more and more computer oriented. At this stage, I plan to make my blog nearly all computer oriented. Instead of seeing Lego things every day, you will see "Programming Tips".

When I do Lego models, they will be built with either Lego Digital Designer or LDraw. I will probably reprogram my blog to be easier to use. I hope this sounds good to you. It sounds great to me!

Cicadas and Wraiths

Today I used two new techniques to make some space Lego models.

This is the top of my space fighter I call "The Wraith"

Here is my new technique. I attach a lego piece with a hole straight through it and then attach lego pieces on both side of it.

Here is what I call a Wraith Cicada. It uses an lego orc flag as a shell.

Here is how I attached it to the body.

Phoenix

Here is my phoenix lego model.

My lego phoenix model has three parts. Here is the details part.

This is the base. It sculpts the pit of fire the phoenix comes out of in this picture.

This is the layout. It shows where things will go.

Generals, Archers, and Builders

Here are three more custom minifigures for today.

This is my general minifigure. His rubber band belt wraps around a stud in his legs.

Here is my painter. He has the painter body, but with one leg replaced by a peg leg.

I'm not sure who this is. She could be an elf or a forester. She has custom hair made with a backwards beard piece.

Who Needs Light?

Objectives:

To observe the effect of the absence of sunlight on a plant by comparing a plant with sunlight on it to one without. The control plant is the one in the sunlight and the unknown is the lack of sunlight. 

Predictions:

A plant needs these three things to survive: sunlight, soil, and water in the right amounts.

I think that if a plant didn’t get any sunlight it would be unable to get food and would die in three days. After one day its leaves would change color, the day after that they would turn brittle, and the day after that, they would turn brown and fall off the plant.

Observations:

We have two pansy plants, one labeled “A” the other “B”. 

One has yellow flowers and the other one has purple flowers. The flowers have three or four smaller petals and one bigger petal.

The plants have green stems with thicker stems in the center of the pot with thinner stems coming out from them. The stems have buds on them, and curly leaves.
The plants have approximately 30 leaves on a stem with approximately 15 stems each, so the plants have approximately 500 leaves each.

Monday, September, 10th: Each plant is getting a half cup of water. Plant “A” is staying on the table in the sunlight and plant B is downstairs in the very dark closet.

After one day, nothing changed.

After a week, nothing changed on plant “A” but on plant “B” the stalks looked a little ghostly. Each plant is getting a half cup of water. Plant “A” is staying on the table in the sunlight and plant B is downstairs in the very dark closet again.

Two weeks after starting, plant “B”s leaves are turning clear then brown and then falling off, while plant “A”s leaves are turning yellow then brown and falling off. The stems of plant “B” are in the process of being bleached clear while the stems on plant “A” are staying green. Plant “A” is staying on the table in the sunlight and plant B is downstairs in the very dark closet again.

Three weeks after starting, plant “B” has turned mostly brown with brownish-green stems and leaves and dark-blue and white flowers, while plant “A” has green and light green stalks and leaves and has several yellow wilted flowers on it. Plant “A” feels soft and does not make sound when touched, and plant “B” faintly crackles and feels rough when touched. Plant “B” is dead.

Results:

At the start of the project, plant “A” and plant “B” looked the same except that plant “A” had yellow flowers and plant “B” had purple ones. After a week, the stalks on plant “B” started to turn ghostly looking and plant “A” stayed the same. After two weeks, plant “B” looked more ghostly and the leaves were turning clear then brown and falling off. Plant “A”s leaves were doing the same thing, except they were turning yellow instead of clear. The stalks on plant “A” stayed green. After three weeks, plant “B” died and plant “A” stayed the same as it had a week ago.

Conclusion:

Compared to what I saw, my overall prediction was correct. The plant died without sunlight. 
I predicted that the leaves on the plant would change colors, turn brittle, then turn brown and fall off and I was correct. I didn’t predict anything other than that, but the leaves turned clear before they turned brown, and the stems on the plant turned clear.
I predicted that this change would happen over a series of days, but in truth it happened over a series of weeks.
From my experiment, I can conclude that a plant needs sunlight to survive.