Last evening, around 6:15 or so, I found myself wandering up and down the hardware aisles of our local Wal-Mart. I wasn't there long before a helpful employee came along and asked if he could help me find something. I told him I needed to find copper wire. "Oh, are you doing some electrical work?" he asked, quite reasonably. "No. My daughter is building an atom."

Yes, it was "science project" time in our household...for about the 357th time. Over the years, our kids have created any number of wierd and odd exhibits. When they run out of time, they just ask the class to look at their father on the TV and that usually counts. We make them do it themselves, although sometimes it is difficult for my wife not to take over and create something spectacular. I have noticed, when you visit the classroom to see the students' work, some seem to be the result of parental intervention. One tip, if you're going to "help" your child with their project, at least remember to remove the Sharper Image price sticker. Once, one of our sons worked on a battery-operated boat. It was part of a unit on electricity. He put in a lot of time and effort. When the craft was put out to sea...in a basin of water...it sputtered, coughed and, then, sank. You could hear the miniature, papier mache Leonardo DiCaprio yelling "I'm king of the world...." as it went down. I thought the accompanying Celine Dion music was a nice touch. Meanwhile, a couple of kids just down the hallway had used their battery-powered project to provide juice to an automatic feeder which then provided high-energy food to a family of hamsters, who then took turns on the wheel in their cage to light not just one little light bulb, but the entire City of Sheboygan...by remote control. Okay, that maybe a little bit of an exaggeration but it did seem like some of the other projects had to include excessive parental assistance not to mention some input from NASA engineers.

Meanwhile back at our own little Los Alamos, my daughter was hard at work creating an atom. She had been told by her teacher that Styrofoam balls were okay but would show a "lack of creativity" and be downgraded. What? How can you do anything related to an atom or solar system or a bug's anatomy and NOT use Styrofoam balls? It seems almost un-American. I think we have the beginnings of a brand new Scopes Monkey trial here but, instead of evolution being the point of contention, it is the highly offensive exclusion of a junior scientist's best friend: the Styrofoam ball! I am almost certain I read somewhere that Louis Pasteur, Madame Curie and Jonas Salk all used Styrofoam in their experiments. If I had been doing the project, I probably would've used them anyway...just for spite. But, my daughter, having this need to excel...gets it from her mom...didn't want to run the risk of a poor grade just to defend her father's Styrofoam ball principle! Instead, she whipped up a pile of homemade modeling clay, dyed in several different colors, and then shaped it into balls with little holes in it for the plastic tubes to go through which would then hold the little bally things out away from the middle do-hickey. All of those terms are scientific in nature and stand for electrons, protons, neutrons and osmonds. My daughter insists that last one doesn't belong but I think she's wrong...then again I'm a little bit country and she's a little bit rock and roll.

As often happens in such intricate procedures, it turned out the now-hardened clay's holes were too small for the plastic tubing. If you tried to widen the gap by hammering a nail through, you ended up with a pile of dust. Yes, my daughter split the atom in our kitchen sink. So, all the work it took to make the clay and dye it and roll it into dozens of balls and then let dry was for naught. (The unused red and green orbs were still sitting...forlornly... on the table this morning. It looked like we had been visited by a Christmas Rabbit who doesn't really get enough fiber in his diet.) In the kitchen, my wife and daughter went through a litany of possible replacements for the discarded clay, while I, hidden from view on the sofa, would yell my obvious choice: "Cranberries....(Styrofoam balls!)....Powder Puffs....(Styrofoam balls!)....Washers....(Styrofoam balls!)....Ping Pong Balls....(STYROFOAM! STYROFOAM! STYROFOAM!) " In the end, they used a different type of clay. When I went to bed, the project was still in full swing.

This morning, there on the counter, hanging from a plastic hangar, was the prettiest giant atom, (that's an oxymoron from me, an ox-like moron) you will ever see. It is so impressively realistic, I'm pretty sure the United Nations will be contacting my daughter about entering into multi-lateral talks regarding her atomic power program. In the meantime, if this teacher doesn't give my daughter an A, I just may have to do my own science project. Maybe a huge replica of my inner ear canal...built entirely of Styrofoam balls.