Lessons in science and fun by Pent Ghelsburg
Disclaimer: The characters depicted in this work are purely fictional. Any resemblance to persons alive or dead is purely coincidental. They are the original and rightful intellectual property of their creators. I use them with permission and respect. This work involves underaged characters. You have been warned
The harvest festival...that time of year when the leaves start to change and the air becomes more brisk. Jackets become much more the norm with trees losing much of their foliage with the coming of a new season. School is very much in swing with classes taking on new turns with whatever content they were focusing on. The students at every school, look forward to the upcoming break that came earlier in the school year.
Nait was a 10 year old lion cub who was a student at the local primary school. Now in the final year of his primary school tenure, the cub was looking forward to moving up. School was far from his favorite thing but there were a few classes he enjoyed. Mainly the ones to do with technology and programming. Of course, as young as he was they hadn't gotten into much of it since they were just beginning to expand beyond the basics of the areas they explored.
The lion cub was a pretty social kid, having a somewhat large group of friends. Most of them were in the same grade he was. A few of them happened to be younger but he was easy to like and made friends rather easily. Nait was a member of a few groups but was most active in a coding group, one that was supervised by older students. It was one of his favorite times of the week since he got to experiment with the most basic form of making video games.
His best friend was a young arctic fox boy whom he'd known since they were just entering grade school. Samaliel was very similar in his tastes for gaming, but never going as far as to take it into development. Instead the young salt and pepper furred boy found solace in board games, role play, and of video game mastery. He was a competitive cub who often found himself in the thick of things when it came to competition, even if he didn't always win.
It was almost the weekend but one of Nait's teachers had recently announced a Science Fair. Every student in their grade was required to participate. Science was far from his favorite subject and the idea of combining his own interests in technology with the fair wasn't something that occurred to him. Even when the cubs in the class were given a suggestion sheet, it didn't dawn upon him. Instead the young lion was busy doodling and the paper with project ideas fell to the side.
During lunch Nait was already sitting down and had forgotten about it. He didn't always focus on his responsibilities in school and it was something that drove his parents crazy. The lion was already making quick with his meal. Recess was always held right after lunch and it was something he always looked forward to. In between bites he busied himself with talking amongst his friends, until his best friend bothered him about something he'd already forgotten about.
“Hey...what is your plan for the Science Fair? We have to participate so we can't just skip it since this is our last year in the school before we move on to the secondary building.” Samaliel said with a look of curiosity about him.
The bigger cub looked over at his friend and hummed. “I'm not sure. I wasn't thinking about it. Can we talk about it later?”
“Nait, we don't have a lot of time to wait. I bet Pent would be willing to help us if we work on it sooner rather than later.” The salt and pepper fox knew his older brother was a sucker for academics.
The lion boy thought about it a moment. “Really? Alright then. Can I come over so we can figure something out?”
“He'll probably be fine with it. He's never said no to you coming over for school work.” Samaliel wasn't worried about asking the older fox for permission.
Nait nodded. “Alright. Cool, we can do that.”
The moment that discussion ended, the lion cub went back to talking about nothing specific. His train of thoughts went every which way. He truly lacked much focus besides things he truly enjoyed. The rest of the day went like normal with Nait going through the same motions as he did every day. At the end of it, he texted his parents to make sure they would be alright with him going. Of course, they were fine with it since he was going for the purpose of schoolwork.
Samaliel and Nait boarded the bus together that the fox boy took home from school. The fox's small family lived but a short distance from the school. But he was expected to take the bus just as his older brother did from the secondary school. The lion and fox had taken the bus together previously but it wasn't something they did very often due to school among other things. Still, the got to enjoy hanging out when they were permitted.
The ride to Samaliel's apartment complex wasn't a long one. He was only a few stops into the buses route. When the stop was reached, the two of them made their way through the small walkway at the center of the vehicle and down the stairs that led out of it. They proceeded down the sidewalk and to the apartment complex where the fox's family lived. It was a two story complex and he lived there with his brother and foster mother.
Samaliel let them inside once they were at the door to it. His older brother, Pent, didn't get home until shortly after the younger fox arrived. The two schools were stagnated so the younger ones didn't face any potential problems with the older one and vise versa. The fox cub shuffled off his shoes and urged his friend to do the same. Once they did, Samaliel locked the door behind them and they continued down the hall to the room where the fox boys lived.
Nait placed his bag down on the floor with Samaliel tossing his own on the back of a chair near his desk. He powered on the computer and waited for it to start it. The salt and pepper boy knew his brother would expect them to come up with their own idea. After all, he'd done it plenty of times before and while Pent helped him before he was still expected to come up with the idea.
“What kind of project would you be interested in, Nait?” He asked as he plopped himself in the office chair and spun it around a few times in place.
The lion pulled up a chair next to his friend. “I dunno. Do you have any ideas?”
“My brother won't let us do anything easy like a volcano. We have to find something unique so he will help.” Samaliel knew just how to appeal to Pent.
Nait thought about it a moment. “I'm not sure.”
Samaliel nodded and pulled up a website they had been given to pull ideas from. The website encompassed all of the areas of science and had been developed for school aged cubs in mind. They were organized in terms of difficulty The two of them began to scroll through it as they didn't look into them beyond the titles and pictures that showed them a representation of each of the ideas. Occasionally the fox picked one of them at random before showing it to his friend.
“What about this one? We could turn a potato into a battery.” The fox kit pointed at the one in question.
The lion looked at it, immediately disinterested. “Boring....”
Samaliel once again started scrolling through the projects until he found another one that caught his eyes.
“This one we could make a solar powered car and see how far it runs.” The smaller boy looked over at his friend for his approval.
Nait stuck his tongue out. “Nah...that stinks. That's been done. Tesla has electric cars now.”
The fox began to look again for a bit and landed on another project. The third one, which about developing fly traps from different types of sugars did not elicit a different response from Nait. They continued to look through them for a short while until Samaliel heard the door shut. He assumed that his brother had arrived home and hoped it was the case. He was already getting fustrated with things and the project hadn't even started yet.
“I'll be right back. I am going to find out if Pent has homework.” The fox kit dissapeared to find his older brother.
Nait didn't bother to look anymore. His mind was distracted by something else entirely. He opened another browser window and looked at a few of his usual favorite websites. It wasn’t long before Samaliel showed back up into the room with his older brother in tow.
“Did you find anything else?” The salt and pepper fox assumed his friend had looked more.
The lion quickly thought to himself, popping back over into the website. He pointed at the one directly in the center of the screen without even reading it.
“I was thinking about doing this one. It seems neat.” Nait said giving a fake smile to sell his façade.
Samaliel walked over to the screen and looked at it. It was a project about determining velocity and how to properly predict it. It was a physics project way over their grade level.
“Velocity? What is that?” He asked since they had only briefly covered it in Science class.
Pent smiled as he gave the most simple explanation he could. “It is the rate of change in an objects positon.”
“Of course you know that….So is that really what you want to do? It sounds hard.” Samaliel expressed his concerns simply based on the difficulty the project predicted.
Nait shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I don’t see anything else.”
The younger fox moved over so the older boy could take a look at the project. After all out of the three of them he was the only one who had a remote grasp of physics. Pent read through it. The idea of it was pretty basic. To use every day house hold objects and roll them down a ramp of any sort. Clocking their time, measuring their distance, and then determining the velocity. Finally they were to compare it against other objects.
“We can do this, sure. It’s not that bad. It just takes a little bit of math. Who wants to make the spreadsheet for our comparable observations?” Pent was willing to help but he would do none of the legwork.
Nait thought about it for a moment. He’d made a few spreadsheets before and wasn’t adverse to doing it so he volunteered. The two fox boys nodded and left the room together to go gather the supplies they needed. Immediately the lion got to work. His math teacher had previously given them templates to work off of for other projects. So he went off the one he found on Samaliel’s computer since it was easier than making it from scratch.
By the time that Samaliel and Pent returned, Nait had finished the spreadsheet and printed it off. The lion picked himself up from the chair before picking it up. He went to find the other two boys and found them setting up a small wooden plank from the coffee table. A few small toy cars were set up at the top of it. The younger fox saw his approach and waved him over. They were ready to get things started.
The lion cub brought the spreadsheet over with him to the table and handed it to Samaliel. Pent was watching them from behind as he was taking only an auxillary role. The younger fox looked back at his brother.
“So what do we need to do?” The salt and pepper boy hadn’t read the instructions since Nait had just randomly picked the idea.
Pent didn’t think about it long as he had a good idea in mind. “You are going to need to mark a starting point on the plank for the cars. Then roll the cars down it and measure the distance. You will need to repeat it a few times.”
Both of the other boys took opposite sides of the plank of wood. Samaliel drew a thin black line near the top of it to signal the start point. Pent took a hold of the spreadsheet from Nait as he anticipated having to record the data.
“On three, Nait. One…two…three…” Samaliel announced as both of them released the cars and they treaded down the wooden plank.
The two cars ended up making their way to floor below but the carpet prevented them from going much further.
“Hmm…We should try this outside where there is less friction at play. Still, I think this data will be helpful. Please measure the distance of how far the two cars traveled.” Pent made the suggestion since it wasn’t a clean test trial.
Samaliel nodded and took the cars while Nait picked up the piece of wood. The three of them made their way outdoors to the parking lot in front of the complex. It was still early enough that many of the cars in the community had not yet come home. They continued to a far end of the parking lot, removed from the main part of it. Pent figured it would be safer here with less possibility of interference from other furs walking around.
It was a cool day out. The sun was still out and a light breeze carried through the area. Pent noticed the curb stops for the cars weren’t that high so he suggested they find a different prop to create an additional angle to test. Nait found an old box sitting around and brought it over to where they had set up. Once again they platformed the piece of wood on a different surface to set up a ramp for the cubs to test on.
The two cubs set up their cars and waited for Pent to do his countdown. The cars sped down the ramp, going a bit further along the pavement but eventually coming to a hault. Nait measured the distance and Samaliel took the responsibility of recording it from his brother. They repeated this same thing for the curb stop, with a little less impactful result. The incline of the hill was impacting the distance the cars traveled but they could see only minor difference in the speed.
Pent pulled out some marbles from his pocket, telling the two boys they should repeat the process on them as well. After all just using the cars was not enough of a sample size by his standards. Nait watched him with bated interest. By this point he was getting bored. The possibility of having to do additional tests was not sitting well with him. He sighed deeply with hopes the older cub would pick up on his annoyance.
The white fox looked at him with the two marbles in hand. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m bored. Can’t we do something else?” The lion asked while tapping his paw in place to show his obvious impatience.
Pent considered his response before answering. “We’re almost done. We can’t just rely on one set of sample tests.”
“But we ran the cars so many times. Why do we need to do marbles as well?” Nait said as he didn’t see the point of additional experiements for the project.
The older cub huffed. “The cars are nothing more than our base line for results. We need something to compare it to.”
Nait rolled his eyes as he simply wasn’t having it. “Can’t we do something else? There has to be another way we can do a different test than with marbles.”
The arctic fox hummed in thought. “What if we go up the hill and roll balls down it? It will be harder to measure but it will be different.”
“Could we roll down it instead?” The lion smirked at the thought of making fun out of it.
Pent shrugged giving into it since he didn’t see the harm in it. “I suppose. Go on and grab our stuff. I will go get some balls to toss down the hill.”
“Hey, what if we took a wagon down the hill? That would be pretty fun. I bet we could convince Pent that it would be a good test too.” Samaliel suggested as he knew there was one in the back of the apartment complex that was free to use.
The bigger cubs smile grew as he thought about it. “Oh, that sounds awesome. Yeah, let’s do that. I’ll go take the stuff inside and you can grab the wagon.”
Samaliel nodded and gave him a key before they went their separate ways. Nait returned the stuff to indoors and locked the door behind him before returning. He knew exactly which hill Pent was talking about since the largest and most obvious one was directly behind the complex. The lion headed towards it, walking at a quick pace. He could see the shadows of the other two cubs and the wagon at the top of the hill.
By the time that Nait had arrived, Samaliel had explained to his brother the purpose of the wagon. Pent had brought a plastic inflatable pool ball with him as well as a few different sports balls to try out. He had set them in a box so that they didn’t roll down until they were ready.
“So does that sound like a good idea, Pent? Nait and I could roll down the hill in the wagon and you can measure the distance.”
Pent shook his head. “That wagon you brought does not look sturdy. You could crash into something and hurt yourselves.”
“Oh come on, Pent. There is a huge pile of leaves from where the Cartiers had piled them up from raking.” Samaliel pointed at it and the leaves were clearly visible from where they were standing on the hill.
The white fox looked at it and didn’t put much thought about it. “I am pretty sure you would have a hard time controlling the wagon going down hall. The little handle isn’t really meant for that.”
“Please, Pent? I promise I won’t complain anymore about the project.” The lion said as he interjected with a suggestion he knew the older fox cub would consider.
Pent sighed. “Fine. But don’t tell me I didn’t warn you after you crash.” Pent placed the balls to the side so they could do it afterwards.
“Cool thanks, Bro. We’ll be careful. Come on, Nait. Can you hold the wagon for us, Pent?” Samaliel asked to keep the wagon from moving as they got in it.
The white fox nodded and took his spot on the side of it. He knelt down next to it to provide extra support for the two boys as they entered. Nait got in first since he was the bigger of the two boys. Having to scrunch up his legs because the size of the wagon didn’t accommodate for it. Samaliel followed soon after and the lion wrapped his arms around the other cub for a little bit of extra safety. Samaliel held onto the sides of the wagon and looked over at his brother before nodding.
Pent got up and slowly moved them towards the part of the hill that declined downward. He held onto the back of the wagon as he could feel the tug of gravity against it.
“Ready?” He said to make sure the two boys inside were prepared for whatever happened.
Samaliel and Nait both nodded. Each of them holding on just a bit more tightly. Pent soon let go, allowing gravity to do it’s work on the small wagon. Bit by bit the thing picked up speed until the thing hit the steep descent. Sending it hurling down the hill at what the two cubs thought was much faster than it actually was. The adrenaline rush raced through their bodies as the little wagon soared forward racing towards the pile of leaves.
At the end of it, The leaves caught in the wheels of the wagon and ejected both of the boys out of it. Both of them landed face down with Nait on top of the other cub. Pent looked down at them and watched for a moment to make sure there were no signs of distress. It wasn’t’ long before Nait got up and helped Samaliel do the same. Both of them had big smiles on their faces so it was quite apparent neither of them had hurt themselves.
“Did you want to measure, Pent?” Samaliel yelled up to his brother.
The older fox thought about it. “Nah…the leaves were an unnecessary obstacle we haven’t had before.”
Samaliel nodded and took hold of the handle of the wagon before leading it out of the pile of leaves. The lion and fox cubs slowly made their way back up the hill to where Pent was standing. The older boy was curious why they brought it up but didn’t ask about it.
“Can we finish the project now? I’d like to do my own homework before dinner.” The white furred cub had a few things he needed to finish.
The younger boys both nodded and moved the wagon towards the flatter area of the hill. Pent clumped a small pile of dirt under it so it didn’t move. They went back to work before long with Pent giving each of them a ball. They rolled each type of ball down the hill a few times. Collecting each of them once they were out of balls. Samaliel was made the official measurement boy of the activity while Nait busied himself recording.
It took them about half an hour to complete the rest of it. The sun was starting to dim on the horizon showing that it was getting late.
“Let’s head inside. That should be enough data for you two to come up with a conclusion.” Pent said while grabbing the wagon from where it was sitting.
Nait suddenly got an idea before he stopped the other boy. “Wait, Pent. Do you want to ride?”
“Not particularly. I have homework to do.” The arctic fox said not giving it much thought. Pent started to walk away.
The lion reached out and grabbed Pent’s free hand. “Please, Pent? I promise it was fun.”
“If I ride the wagon, will you let me do my homework?” The older boy said knowing he probably wouldn’t get out of it any other way.
Nait nodded with a hopeful smile on his face. Pent paused a moment before responding.
“Fine, Samaliel hold the wagon in place please.” The older fox waited for the younger one to take his place.
The salt and pepper fox did as he was asked, doing it in the same manner Pent did. The older fox got in first since he was the bigger of the two with Nait following soon after. Once they were inside, the younger fox tried pushing them. Samaliel had a bit of trouble since they were heavier but but was able to make a small bit of progress as he put his legs into it. Fortunately for him gravity soon took over and the little wagon picked up pace as it lurched forward down the hill.
The wagon hurled over the pinnacle of it, sending it down the decline of the hill. Speeding up as it rushed forward. The rickety wagon clacked and clanged as it buckled against the uneven surface. Nait was a lot more thrilled about it than Pent was who found himself anxious about what might happen at the end. Soon the thing came to an abrupt halt. Sending them soaring over the front end of it and into the soft landing of the leaves.
Samaliel had followed them down since he had no intention of staying there. Pent picked himself up and helped the younger boy up as well. The older fox couldn’t help but smile. Despite the anxiety he felt, he still found it exciting. He patted the lion on the back and picked up the wagon. The three of them headed back indoors. Each of them shuffled their shoes off as they stood there idly for a moment.
“I will let your Mom know your staying here Nait but only if you promise to finish the project. Deal?” The white furred boy said as he was once again focused on the academic aspects of things.
Nait nodded. He had no reason to disagree now. After all he’d gotten to do what he wanted and he did come over there with that goal in mind. Samaliel motioned for him to join him back in the fox brothers room. There they remained working on the remaining details of the spreadsheet. The details of the project itself helped them through it. It was only the math that caused them any problem as putting it all together was rather simple.
When it was finally time for a conclusion, Pent helped them come up with a summative analysis of their work. The three of them only put to rest at dinner. Pent served them their meal and both other boys were grateful. Despite being behind, he was happy to help. The older fox had always been a stickler for academics especially when it came to Science. Even despite dividing his time, he was able to finish his own assignments.
Shortly after dinner they showed the scope of their project to the older cub. Pent was happy with what they saw. Despite neither of them being science nuts like he was, they had put enough effort into it that he was happy with it. Of course they still had to put it into a presentation format. But they had done enough work to put the thing on the shelf for the night. Nait would go home, even going as far to tell his parents about it. They made him promise to show it to them when the time came.
Several weeks had passed and the Science Fair had arrived. Pent had coached both Nait and Samaliel on presenting their material. Obviously doing so more with his brother but both knowing enough to handle it in different respects. When it came time for judging they received high marks, something Nait hadn’t gotten in some time when it came to Science. An achievement he would share with his parents along with the results of the project.
Of course…there was no placement since it was not designed to be a competition. It was purely held for the sake of academic participation and achievement. It would remain a project both of them would forget in short time. As for the experience itself…the wagon would remain something in their mind. A time in their young lives that they could look back on and reminisce. At least until the next time that Nait could convince his friends to partake in the finer things in their young lives.
