Solids, Liquids, Guess Who's Got Gas?

by Michelle Houts

Then I remember that I promised Dad I’d study spelling words with Cora. Cora only protests a little, but she and I have to take the same spelling test on Friday, so she agrees and we head over to the Talking Room.

  The library has study rooms—most of them Quiet Only rooms. But there’s also one Talking Room, where we can use our real voices and we don’t have to whisper.

  This week’s words aren’t too hard and after fifteen minutes, Cora and I are feeling good about Friday’s spelling test. She heads to the fiction section and I stop at the Circulation Desk to see what Aunt Darian has to say. She’s on her computer.

  “Here’s what I’ve got, Lucy,” she says. “In the juvenile nonfiction section, you’ll find three books on the states of matter.”

  She hands me a slip of paper with the books’ call numbers written on it. “Thanks,” I say.

  “And,” she continues, “in the biographies, you’ll find a book on this guy.” She motions me over to her computer screen. There’s a picture of a smart-looking man wearing glasses and holding a book. His necktie looks more like a scarf, but I can tell it’s a very old picture, so maybe that’s how men wore their ties back then.

  Aunt Darian jots down his name for me and off I head to the nonfiction section. I get the books about states of matter and I read a lot of the same things Miss Flippo has taught us about solids, liquids, and gases. When I get to the third book, I’m very confused.

  This book talks about four states of matter, not three. I decide to check it out and take it home to read, but before I go back to the Circulation Desk, I stop over in the biography section. The name Aunt Darian wrote down for me is Irving Langmuir, and it doesn’t take me long to find his biography. He’s on the front cover in the same scarf-tie and glasses, holding a book, and looking very serious. I add it to my pile and I’m off.

  On the short bike ride back to Cora’s house, Cora mentions the Harvest Festival costume contest again. With all the exciting science experiments and the news of the field trip, I had forgotten all about it. “I thought about dressing as Princess Purple Power,” she says. “But I don’t know. Ugh! I just don’t know what to be this year, Lucy!”

  “Maybe I’ll be Lucy Watkins,” I say, mostly joking.

  “You can’t be you!” Cora cries. Then her face brightens with an idea. “Hey, maybe I’ll be you!”

  “Right,” I tell her. “You be me, and …”

  “… you can be me!” Cora finishes.

  We get to her driveway, and it’s a good thing, because we’re both laughing so hard, we might fall off our bikes if we keep riding. Suddenly, Cora gets very serious.

  “If I were you, I’d have to wear plain clothes,” she says.

  “Normal clothes,” I correct her. “And if I were you, I’d have to wear a pink tutu.”

  “Or purple,” Cora corrects me.

  We both stand there for a minute.

  “Let’s think of something better,” Cora suggests.

  “Sounds good to me,” I agree, and I pedal off toward home, feeling relieved that I don’t have to wear a tutu. But I’m still no closer to having a costume for the Harvest Festival than I was before.

  Chapter Seven

  A Shocking Discovery

  At supper, Mom says she remembers going to Mr. Weaver’s apple orchard with Aunt Darian when they were little girls. “Oh, yes! It was so much fun. The cider press was going and the bees buzzed around, loving the juicy bits of smashed apple.” She signs my permission slip and I put it safely into my backpack.

  “Would you like to play a game after your shower?” Mom asks.

  “No, I think I’ll read my new library books,” I say.

  Mom grins. “That’s my girl!”

  In my room, I spread the new books out on the bed. I start with the one about the four states of matter. Four? Miss Flippo can’t be wrong! She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.

  But, sure enough, I read about solids, then liquids, then gases. And then, plasma. The book says plasma is in lightning and in television screens. It says we’d have a hard time living without plasma. How could Miss Flippo not know about plasma if it’s so important?

  Next, I read a little bit from the biography of Irving Langmuir. Except it’s really written for people older than me, so I don’t understand much of it, except that he was a guy who studied plasma. Soon, my eyes get heavy. By the time I crawl under the covers, I know two things: Miss Flippo doesn’t know about plasma, and Irving Langmuir did.

  On Friday, it rains almost all day, so we have indoor recess. Miss Flippo opens the Science Lab for more solids, liquids, and gases experiments. She made some strange goopy stuff at home and brought it in for us to observe.

  “Touch it, squeeze it, roll it, pour it. Do anything you possibly can with it, and then write down whether you think it’s a liquid or a solid,” Miss Flippo tells us as she puts lab coats on the four stools at the Science Lab. “Four at a time, please.”

  When the recess bell rings, Bridget and I are the first to the Science Lab. “We played with this stuff in first grade,” Bridget says. “It’s awesome.”

  We put on lab coats and Heather and Logan join us.

  I’ve never seen the odd green goo before, but I can tell it’s a liquid just by looking at in the bowl.

  Miss Flippo comes over to get us started. “Are you ready?” she asks.

  All four of us nod. She pours a puddle of it right in the center of the lab table. “There you go. Begin your observation,” she says and then she walks away.

  Bridget digs in with both hands. Heather touches the green puddle with one finger. Logan scoops up some with his left hand. I just watch. The stuff oozes over Bridget’s hand and dribbles back to the tabletop. Yep, liquid. Definitely liquid.

  “Here, Lucy,” says Logan. “Take this.” I look, and Logan has rolled some of this liquid goo into a ball the size of a golf ball. I stare at it in his hand as he rolls and rolls and rolls it like play-dough.

  “How did you do that, Logan?” I ask. “You can’t roll a liquid into a ball.”

  Logan laughs. “It’s not a liquid, Lucy. It’s a solid. See?” He keeps rolling it and then holds it up. “Take it.”

  I put my hand flat out and Logan places the ball onto my palm. For a moment, it keeps its sphere shape. Then, suddenly, without any warning, it “melts” into my hand and I’m holding a handful of goo. Oozing, dripping slimy goo.

  “Whoa!” Heather says. “Did you guys see that?”

  Now I have to try to reform this liquid into the solid Logan had handed me. I squeeze my fingers shut tight and goo oozes between them. But when I open them, I have a solid chunk of matter resting in my palm.

  “Now, roll it!” Logan says. “Hurry!”

  Before the solid goo can melt again, I start to roll, like I do when Grandma visits from Ohio and we make cake balls. Sure enough, as long as I’m rolling, I can make a solid sphere that keeps its shape. But as soon as I stop, it collapses into liquid again.

  Miss Flippo comes back. “Well, scientists, what do you think about this green goo? Liquid or solid?”

  Bridget holds up two green hands, dripping with goo. “Liquid,” she says.

  Heather, who has been rolling a perfect golf-ball-sized sphere of goo, stops to show what she’s made. “Solid,” she says, but her solid quickly starts to lose its shape. “No, liquid,” she changes her mind and starts rolling frantically. “Now, solid again!” she announces.

  “It’s both,” I say. “It’s liquid when it’s just resting on the table or in your hand. But it can turn solid when …” I don’t know how to say what I want to say next.

  “… when pressure is applied.” Miss Flippo finishes, helping me out.

  “Yes! When pressure is applied!”

  The recess bell rings. It’s time for music, but there’s a lot of goo mess on the table.

  “Miss Flippo, may I stay here for a minute and help you clean up?” I ask.

  “Why, certainly, Lucy. I would appreciate that.”


  My lab partners wipe the goo off their fingers with a damp cloth and hurry to line up at the door for music. I scoop goo back into the bowl and decide I have to tell Miss Flippo what I learned in the library book.

  “Miss Flippo?” I say.

  “Yes, Lucy?”

  “You said there are three states of matter, right?”

  Miss Flippo smiles like she already knows what I’m going to say. “Well, I did say that almost everything we come into contact with daily is either a solid, a liquid, or a gas.”

  “I found out that you’re forgetting one,” I say. I hope she doesn’t feel too badly. After all, she was smart enough to be an Educator Astronaut a few years ago. She might be embarrassed about this.

  “Oh? Which one?” she asks. “Because there are several more. Let’s see, there are—”

  What Miss Flippo says next, I can’t even tell you. It’s a long list of crystal this and spinning that and super solid something. When she’s done, she says,

  “Oh, and of course, there’s plasma. Could that be the one you’re thinking of?”

  I just nod.

  “I’m so proud of you, Lucy! At the science teachers’ conference I attended last summer, we looked at the newest science text books, and they all include four states of matter, not three, in the second grade editions.”

  I think I’m still nodding when Miss Flippo says, “Well, I think we’re all cleaned up here. Are you ready for music?”

  “Yes,” I croak, finding my voice and heading for the door.

  “Oh, Lucy,” I hear Miss Flippo say. “I should ask you, how did you find out about plasma?”

  “From Irving Langmuir,” I manage to say.

  Miss Flippo is beaming. “Well, then! Since Irving Langmuir told you about plasma, would you mind if I asked you to tell your classmates what you’ve learned?”

  “I don’t mind at all,” I say, because I’ve not only got my voice, but I’ve also got a fantastic idea.

  Chapter Eight

  A Lesson Learned

  It rains all weekend, and Sunday evening Mom says, “Lucy, it’s not looking good for your field trip in the morning.”

  But when Monday morning comes, the sun gets up just at the same time I do. I get dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and Mom reminds me to wear my oldest sneakers because it’s bound to be muddy in the orchard.

  Mrs. James waves us into the school, and Miss Flippo takes attendance and asks me to tell the class about plasma and Irving Langmuir. They don’t look very interested and suddenly I understand why Miss Flippo is always using experiments and activities to teach us new things. When I get to the part about lightning and televisions, a few of the kids get a little more interested.

  “We saw the plasma TVs at the store,” Ajay says.

  “My Uncle Dave got struck by lightning once, and he’s still alive!” Brody adds.

  “Your Uncle Dave is a lucky man, Brody,” Miss Flippo says. Then she gives last-minute instructions before we get on the bus for our trip.

  “You’ve learned a lot about three—now four—states of matter since we started this science unit,” she tells us. “Today, I want you to listen to Mr. Weaver and learn about the apple trees and apples, but all the while, I’d like you to try to identify the solids, liquids, and gases around us. Hopefully, there will be no lightning, so it’s unlikely we’ll find any electrically charged gases or plasma around us. Ready, everyone?”

  Room 2-C is more than ready. We pile onto the bus and look out the windows at the brown farm fields as we leave Granite City. Some fields still have corn standing in them. Their dried-out stalks are leaning and their long leaves look like arms dragging on the ground. Other fields are already harvested and we just see brown dirt. In one field, a farmer—not Mr. Farmer the custodian but a real farmer—is driving a huge combine through the corn, knocking it down and into the belly of the machine.

  Mr. Weaver’s orchard isn’t too far away, and soon we’re walking down a long row of apple trees, listening to Mr. Weaver talk. “Many of the apples were picked in September,” he tells us, “but we’re still picking the later varieties.”

  We come to a place where a dozen men and women are on ladders. They’ve got big bags hanging across their bodies and they are picking apples and placing them gently in the bags.

  I think about the corn-harvesting machine, and I raise my hand.

  “Lucy, do you have a question for Mr. Weaver?” Miss Flippo asks.

  “Yes. Mr. Weaver, why don’t you have a machine that picks apples?”

  Mr. Weaver nods. “That would be wonderful, but apples are a delicate fruit. They bruise, just like you and me. Humans have to handle the apples carefully enough not to bruise them when they’re picked.”

  Stewart Swinefest seems to always be at the back of the group. Once, when I turn around, I see him reach up and pick an apple off a tree then take a big bite.

  “Stewart!” I whisper. “You’re not supposed to do that!”

  He sticks his tongue out at me and says, “Be quiet, Lucy Goosey. You’re not supposed to be talking.”

  As we pass through the orchard, I see Stewart pick and chomp on another apple and then another and then another.

  Next, we go into a big barn, where people are sorting the apples. The best apples go into one bin and the small or oddly shaped ones go into another. The “oddballs,” as Mr. Weaver calls them, get picked up by a forklift and moved into the next room. There, two men are operating an old-fashioned cider press. The apples go in, then they get squeezed between two big, wooden blocks with a trough dug out of the middle, and then the cider pours down into a bucket.

  “Liquid!” whispers Tessa, pointing to the cider, and I nod. She’s right. The machine is turning solid apples into liquid cider!

  The whole class moves on, but behind me I hear chewing. It’s Stewart, of course. He’s pulling apples from his pockets and chowing down as fast as he can.

  “Hush your mouth, Lucy Goosey,” he says, running past me to catch up with the class. I didn’t even say anything!

  At the end of the tour, we get to taste apple cider, and Mr. Weaver’s grown-up daughter spreads homemade apple butter on pieces of white bread for everyone.

  When we’re lining up for the bus, we all shake Mr. Weaver’s hand and I get my chance to ask him about his name.

  “Did your ancestors weave fabric?” I ask.

  Mr. Weaver looks a little surprised.

  “I’ve had a lot of visitors, young lady, but you’re the first to ask that question.” He thinks for a few seconds. “I can’t actually say that I know the answer, but I do know they came to the United States from Switzerland. Back as far as I can trace my family, we’ve always been farmers.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Weaver,” I say, and I climb on the bus. When I slide into a seat with Cora, I hear munching noises behind me. It’s Stewart. Of course it’s Stewart.

  Back at Granite City Elementary, we go straight to lunch and then afternoon recess, and then, finally, back to Room 2-C.

  “Let’s talk about our trip this morning and how it relates to what we’ve learned about states of matter,” Miss Flippo says.

  “The trees were solid,” Logan says.

  “The apples were solid,” Natalie adds.

  “The barns and buildings were solid,” Manuel says.

  “The ladders and bins were solid, too,” says Eddie.

  Miss Flippo agrees. “And what did you see today that could be considered a liquid?”

  “The cider!” Tessa and a dozen others all say at once.

  “And maybe the apple butter, too?” Annalisa asks.

  “No,” Carl disagrees. “The apple butter was thick. The lady used a spoon to spread it on the bread.”

  “Ah, then, we’d better go back to the beginning to figure this out,” Miss Flippo says. She pulls up our definitions from the first day of our unit and reads, “Liquid takes the shape of the container it’s in.”

  “So,” I say, “the apple bu
tter is a liquid, because when it’s in the jar, it fills up the shape of the jar.”

  “That’s correct. It’s a thick liquid, but it’s a liquid.”

  I realize there’s one voice I’m used to hearing almost constantly, but I haven’t heard it once since we got back to the classroom. I look back and to my right and Stewart is slouched down in his seat. Both arms are folded across his stomach.

  Miss Flippo is asking the class about gases. Room 2-C is silent.

  Suddenly Collin blurts out, “The air!”

  Miss Flippo nods. “Yes, of course. We always count on the air around us to contain the many gases we need for breathing. Anything else?”

  Liquids are easy. Solids are easy. But gases are harder. The whole room is quiet.

  So very quiet.

  Until …

  Phssssst.

  And again, only louder, Phhssssstt!

  All eyes turn to Stewart Swinefest. I bet he has a balloon under his desk that he’s letting the air out of a little at a time.

  But he’s still sitting the same way he was a minute ago, with his arms folded across his belly. His face looks a little green. Sarah and Eddie, who sit on either side of him, begin to scoot their desks away.

  “Miss Flippo,” Stewart moans. “I don’t feel so good.”

  Miss Flippo leaps to her feet and walks Stewart into the hallway. When she comes back into the room alone, she dials the office and lets the nurse know Stewart’s on his way to the clinic.

  “He ate a lot of apples,” I tell Miss Flippo. “I mean a lot of apples.” I’m usually not a tattletale, but I think Miss Flippo should know. I guess she thinks it’s important, too, because she tells the nurse before she hangs up the phone.

  “Apples, my young scientists,” she says, “are full of fiber and natural sugars, both of which can cause a lot of gas when eaten in excess. I think we’ve just answered our question about what kind of gases we found at the apple orchard!”