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Problem Solving through Science! | Tuesday, 3rd period

Upon arrival in the Danger Shop today, the students would discover a disgruntled (and very wet) Miguel at the controls of the shop, which was pouring down rain. After a few more moments, he scowled and kicked the console. "You know what? Fine." He folded his arms and looked at the students. "Today's project - build a better umbrella. Make something that'll keep you dry, stow away easily, not get turned inside-out by high winds, and preferably not get you wet putting it away."

And do it while it was raining. Hey, that wasn't his fault.

"Alternately, get this damn thing to stop raining."

He was flexible.

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Wet. Or annoyed. Or both.

Try to stay dry.

Build an umbrella! Or convince the Danger Shop to cooperate.

He's here!

Is it naptime yet?

Astrid Magnussen

Peebee

Honestly, Astrid was mostly just wondering if she should instead focus on building a better hair dryer so she didn't wind up late for work in trying to look less like a drowned rat.

But an umbrella, she could manage, for the most part, easy enough to build one that'll keep the rain off, even if she figured she couldn't really put something together that would be very convenient or functional beyond the class. But her main goal was not reineventing the wheel here, just to keep dry.

And to figure out if she wanted to remain drenched longer just so she could make it look more like a pinwheel, because she was clearly going to drive that into the ground as much as possible.

Eh, Peebee might try and get the Danger Shop to snap out of it later, but not while she was soaking wet, thanks. So first order of business: that umbrella thing.

Which was simple enough, really: rig together a tiny emitter to project a self-contained mass effect field, make sure the resulting kinetic barrier was tuned properly so that it'd repel water, and then fiddle with the fine-tuning a little bit more so that she could just embed the emitter in the shoulder of her jacket and it'd project the barrier above her head at the right height.

And voila, hands-free, super-portable umbrella that she didn't even have to worry about bumping into things, because it'd pass through most stationary objects just fine!

. . . as soon as she adjusted the size and curvature of the barrier so that it wasn't flinging water off in random directions or dumping it down her back, anyway.

Miguel would be impressed at her dedication if she opted for the pinwheel. There was a theme, and then there was opting for extra misery in service of a theme.

"Automatic A if you show me that tech," Miguel said. He'd been working on something similar, but had a problem getting the forcefield technology he was used to down to an unobtrusive size.

"Sure," Peebee agreed readily enough, "but it is a little bit contingent on whether you're going to be able to get a hold of Element Zero. Other than that little snag? Easy as anything."

"Never heard of it," Miguel said. "Doesn't mean I can't find it if you can get me a breakdown of it. What's unique about it?"

"It's not really an element, I just need to clarify that," Peebee said, holding one finger up for emphasis. "It's a result of what happens when a star goes supernova. Sometimes the energy from that does interesting things to solid matter. Tricky stuff to get a hold of; from what I know, the cost can be pretty prohibitive. Anyway, get a hold of a little bit of that, subject it to electrical current, and ta-da! It's how people who have some of it in their actual tissues, like Kaidan and Jack and me, end up being biotics."

She snapped her fingers. "Speaking of whom, they might be able to hook you up with some. It'd be pricey, just as a heads up, but I'd guess they have better connections there than I would."

"Huh. Okay, so what do you need to do to it to get a controlled, directional field?" Miguel asked.

All the multiverse, he could probably find some. Or something else that'd work.

"Huh. Let me see if I can figure out how to explain that," Peebee said thoughtfully. "It's kind of an instinctive thing for me so I don't know how to explain it really, but hang on."

She brought up her omni-tool and pulled up a schematic to show him instead ~~because yay handwavey technobabble~~.

Miguel looked at it. "Huh. So all the tech really does is harness a natural power of the stuff." He made a face. "That's cheating, science," he accused the universe.

"How is it cheating?" Peebee asked, laughing.

"Using inherent properties instead of actual engineering." Miguel rolled his eyes. "Doesn't leave us anything to do!"

"Sadly, I have to inform you," just because you might be technically older than him doesn't mean you should address the teacher that way, Peebee, "there are a few things in the universe that really can't be engineer. Not many, but they do exist."

Miguel grinned. "Right, because the universe cheats."

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Problem Solving through Science! | Tuesday, 3rd period

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