fandomhigh | Science Fair, Friday Afternoon

Science Fair, Friday Afternoon

After lunch, the area was transformed into a classic science fair. There was plenty of room for experiments to be set up, a ballot box to vote for the best among them, and, just in case, several fire extinguishers not-so-discreetly stowed within easy grabbing distance.

Because this was an all-school event, Tyler had also procured some chips, soda and other snacks, and set them up at a distance from the experiments. No good would come of mixing up salt and saltpeter, after all.

[OOC: ~~Wait for~~ OCD~~, pls~~ is up!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Because no OCD is complete without this thread.

Rikku bounced in, looking around excitedly. Science! A whole room of it! Neeeeeeeeat.

It was a science fair, and science included technology, like Mac was planning on missing out on that.

Set up your exhibit, or gawk at other people's. Please don't blow up the school.

Rikku was standing in front of a small table with a TV set on it. The TV had a small siren over it. Both the TV and the siren were off. Next to Rikku was a small droid that reached to her waist. It, too, was off.

"Okay," Rikku said, clapping her hands in front of herself and trying not to be too nervous. "Back home, we had mech droids, like this. We'd send them out into the desert to zap fiends. All of us knew how to disarm them, so they were just programmed to attack anything that engaged. They would travel in random paths, until either they ran out of charge or got destroyed. Usually the latter."

"Last spring, for Inventiontronics class, I took one of those droids and added a GPS system. I also pulled off the weapons, because that teacher asked us not to have any weapons involved. The modified droid was set to ping back to base. If the signal was lost, base would know a possible location for fiend activity."

"This," she said, gesturing to the droid next to her, "is the latest modification. I left the weapons off, still -- I was going to add them back on, with instructions on how to disarm, but Professor Durden said there might be kids or animals who couldn't read them, and I really want to err on the side of nobody getting hurt from this. So. One of the things I did add is a camera, right here on top. This sends a constant feed back to base." She switched on the television set. "So we have the droid's location, from the GPS settings, and we have a feed of what it's seeing."

"The droid now has a set path -- I've programmed this one just to zip around the building and come back, in a loop, but if we were doing this island-wide, we'd come up with paths that divided town up. There would be a screen for each, somewhere like the trooper's station. Nobody would have to watch them constantly, or anything. But when a disturbance happened -- hang on, I'll show you."

She switched the droid to 'on'. It rolled forward, zipping along the rows of experiments. "It's okay, it's got a sensor, it's not gonna thump into anybody else's project," she said quickly. "And I'm won't leave it on too long."

She beckoned, and Reno came forward. "So. There's one more modification, and I'm gonna hope this one works, or I'm gonna be punching my boyfriend for no reason."

"Tough love, zoto," Reno contributed helpfully, with that usual smirk on his face.

"Dork," she grinned. "Okay, here we go."

She punched Reno in the stomach. Not too hard, she hoped, but she didn't want to run the risk of not triggering the system, so she couldn't pull it. Ah, well, he could take a punch.

Just after the punch landed, two things happened. The droid stopped in its tracks, turned, and zipped over to them. The second was that the small siren on the TV began flashing, and emitting a low whoop sort of noise.

"First round of defense," she grinned, trying not to bounce. "There's a disturbance, and whoever's supposed to be on screen watch knows there's something interesting happening on that screen. We've got a visual, so that person either knows there's something bad going on -- and if so, they've the exact location -- or that the alarm got tripped by accident, by squirrels fighting or something else that isn't a problem. If it's an invasion, that person can ring the usual alarms. And if it's not --"

She pressed a small button on top of the TV, next to the siren. The siren switched off again, and the droid stopped in its path, rolling back to the exact location it had left a few moments before. "-- The droid goes back to its patrol. Any questions?"

(

raspberryturk modded with permission, and my thanks to

tyler_back and

raspberryturk both, for letting my girl ramble on about this idea IC all semester. Also, she usually calls Tyler "Tyler," but since this is official Science Fair she felt like "Professor Durden" sounded better.)

Tyler was a little dumbfounded. He knew Rikku had talked about this; he just hadn't been sure it would really work. "Beautiful work," he managed. "Is this the size the working ones will be?"

Edited 2008-12-13 00:41 (UTC)

"I think so?" She chewed her lower lip, mulling it over. "Like, this one is -- if we had more of these, we could go on and hook 'em up, kinda thing. It's completely functional, although I'm kinda not sure how high the range is. It'd probably be better if that was higher, but I'm not sure how to up it, yet. If someone thought they should be bigger, so they had a higher viewpoint for the feed, or smaller, to escape notice -- it's doable. This is just kinda the size I went with, you know?"

Mainly because it was the size the droid started as.

"I had more ideas, too, like ..." Rikku considered. "Like Reno said, you know, maybe it should have remote-controlled access, so whoever saw the alarm could take over the droid? And maybe have weapons there, if you can make 'em tamper-proof? But I kinda ... ran out of time."

Which usually happened, when she worked on things like this.

"I like the remote," Tyler said approvingly. "Have you talked to the mayor at all about selling these in his shop?"

"I haven't," she admitted. "Or Constable Fraser, either. But Cable's my boss, he'll be easier to bump into. Oooh, I hadn't thought of that, they'd make for handy home-protection kits. Or I guess other places you wanna protect, when you're not there."

Just don't confuse the chemicals with the food. That would end badly.

Edited 2008-12-12 13:40 (UTC)

Tyler is around and probably looking a little nervous.

"You know, I think I expected something to explode," Tony said, swaggering over toward Tyler.

"It's way too quiet so far," Tyler said unhappily. "I'd almost appreciate a good explosion."

"Within reason."

"No one should try to kill anyone else," Tyler said. "How's that?"

"Now that sounds much more like a teacher," Tony affirmed.

"I do what I can," Tyler reassured him. "...seriously, it looks like this didn't work the way I hoped."

A pause. "You should look at Rikku's project."

"You could always make it mandatory for your class next time," Tony said, looking over in the direction of said project.

Tyler shrugged. "Next time I'm not teaching science, but yeah, I would if I get it into my head to organize something like this."

"Oh? What are you teaching then?"

"Paperwork's not due yet." Which, to Tyler, was an excellent reason not to have a real answer. "How have you been?"

It was a good change of subject if Tony did say so himself.

"I have sugar all over my suit." He thought that was a good answer.

"I can see that," Tyler said, reaching out to brush some off. "First tinsel, now sugar, huh? What is with the weather this week?"

"This place takes the holidays to an interesting degree," Tony said, nodding in agreement.

Tyler looked dubious. "I never heard of any holiday that required drifts of powdered sugar," he pointed out.

"You're just sad to not be making sugar angels," Tony said dismissively.

"I want to weep," Tyler agreed smugly. "And then get into a nice powdered sugarball fight."

"We could make a sugarman," Tony suggested. "But then, I'd have to ask you to supply the hat for it."

"I'll bite, why my hat?" Tyler was genuinely curious.

"I wouldn't be caught dead buying one," Tony replied with a smirk.

Tyler just squinted at him. "You seriously never wear a hat."

Tony had nice hair. But ... never?"

"I wouldn't say that," Tony replied. "I would just rather avoid looking like an idiot."

Something most hats, in his experience, did just that.

"... and wearing a hat in winter makes you look like an idiot."

Tyler wasn't actually a huge hat wearer himself, but he still wasn't sure he agreed.

"I lived in Malibu for a reason, you know."

"Easy access to surfing?"

"...that too." He paused for a moment, looking at Rikku's project. "How would you like to go to Brazil for the holiday?"

Because trips with them always turned out so well.

Which was why Tyler was giving him a look. Though the New Zealand trip hadn't been so bad, really.

"I was going to stay here." He cocked his head. "Did you want to go for a reason?"

"The surfing would be great this time of year."

"...oh."

Tyler didn't surf, hadn't ever even tried it. He just wasn't sure he wanted to admit that, though it was probably obvious from the way he went quiet."

[OOC: NIGHT!]

"Or we could stay here and enjoy the odd weather," Tony suggested smoothly.

[[SLEEP WELL!]]

Tyler looked grateful. "Travelling around the holidays is always nuts, anyhow."

Never mind that Tony had a private jet.

Not to mention flight attendants that were very friendly. "Right, right. Everyone running around to spend time with their families. There's a reason I never travel commercial."

This is how this will work: You have until midnight EST tonight to tag into the "Science!" thread with a description of your exhibit. Tomorrow morning I'll make a poll to let students and staff select the best contribution. The top three winners will be announced Sunday.

Anticipation is a good thing, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Science Fair, Friday Afternoon

Arrive & Mingle [12/12]

Re: Arrive & Mingle [12/12]

Re: Arrive & Mingle [12/12]

SCIENCE! [12/12]

Re: SCIENCE! [12/12]

Re: SCIENCE! [12/12]

Re: SCIENCE! [12/12]

Re: SCIENCE! [12/12]

Re: SCIENCE! [12/12]

Food! [12/12]

Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

Re: Talk to the Organizer [12/12]

OOC [Science Fair, 12/12]