The 4th Law

I really shouldn't be telling you this story.

It's still far too early, as all of the principals are still alive.

That, and I could probably still get in trouble for it. Or grounded, at the very least...

It was my Junior year of high school, and getting close to Science Fair season. As my class was the one to beat (the top 1% of the entire North Louisiana school elite sat in my classroom), it was expected for us to come up with some pretty original projects. Now, at the time, I was too busy arguing with John Robert about the genius of adding the "Hamburger and French Fry Only" line to the cafeteria and debating the latest episode of "Head of the Class," to pick a good project off the list. Renee scooped up Hydroponics. Aaron chose Cryonics. And Opie took my old idea from the year before, Electrolysis (the tarnish removal system, not the hair removal one). So by the time the list got to me, there wasn't much left to choose from.

DDT (Dr. Donis Taylor) was already showing the early signs of impatience, despite us only being 5 minutes into the 1st hour, and she was ready to give the entire right half of the room detention just out of the sheer principal of the thing. So I said the first thing that came to mind: Thermodynamics. I'm not even sure where I'd heard it before. My mind has this bad habit of recording anything it sees or hears, regardless of the level of importance. The project seemed to please old Battle Axe, though, and that was good enough for me.

But now I was stuck. I had to do a project on an area of science I had no prior knowledge of. Now, some of you younglings out there won't believe this, but this was long before the Internet was even a twinkle in Al Gore's eye. And my home set of the Encyclopedia Glactica was published sometime around the Jefferson administration. The school text books were just as useless, seeing as how they claimed that Nixon was considering a 2nd term.

Now Blondie had a contact over at the LA Tech library, and scheduled some time to get me into the science department. So I made the trek to beautiful downtown Ruston, and did some research. Basically, Thermodynamics breaks down into 3 Laws:

First Law: Energy Can Be neither Created nor Destroyed

Second Law: The Entropy of an Isolated System always Increases

Third Law: The Entropy of a Perfect Crystal at Absolute Zero is Zero

All well and good, right? Right.

Thing is, I was about three pages too short for the assigned report, so I...well, I kinda made up a 4th law.

I know, I know, but that shows you just how bad the Louisiana school system is. And I'm not even sure today what I used as the 4th Law. But that's not important.

Because, here’s the thing. I made it to the state science fair on that one! At first, it was out of desperation to complete the assignment. Then, after I fooled my Chemistry teacher and a couple Shreveport scientists, I couldn’t resist. I had to see how far I could take it.

I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet, and have this (not entirely non-evil) ability to make what I'm saying sound believable. It may not have been too ethical, but man, was it ever fun! I won the school Science Award that year and was even given a medal and some cash for college by a local laboratory.

I’m going to hell for that. But it makes for a great story.

-Jos

"Science does not know its debt to imagination." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson