10478/For SCIENCE!

For SCIENCE!
Date of Scene:	15 March 2022
Location:	Science Lab - Happy Harbor High School
Synopsis:	Mads and Keli meet up in the Science Lab while they're both working on their projects for the Science Fair.
Cast of Characters:	Madison Evans, Keli Quintela

---

Madison Evans has posed:
    Seated at a lab table, a laptop in front of her, as well as an array of baked goods - Madison is using little portable LED lights and a digital camera to take pictures.
    Her science fair project is a little less dramatic this year - how can you top using Pym Particles in your first science project? But somehow she seems to have turned brownies, cookies, quick breads, and sourdough into some sort of 'baking science' project. Labels next to some of the foods say things like 'Cookies' and 'SPACE! cookies.' Honestly, in Madison's mind, it all explains itself.
    Also, the overabundance of baked goods also means she's got a cookie literally hanging out of her mouth as she snaps the photos.

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Ayyyy, why am I even /doing/ this? 'Enter the Science Fair,' I said. 'It'll be fun!' I said. Bad idea is more like it." Keli's voice trails off into muttering under her breath at herself in Spanish as she shoulders her way into the science lab, carrying a box.

    In the box are parts of... something. A robot, maybe? Whatever it is, it's all busted up and looks like maybe it went through an explosion. Or maybe that's just rust? Hard to say.

    "Ohhh, cookies! Can I have a cookie?" She sets the box down on one of the other tables and peers over at Madison.

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Sure!" Madison says brightly. "Would you rather have a cookie - or a SPACE! cookie?" the girl asks brightly. And yes, she somehow //says// it like that.
    It's easy to tell which is which - aside from the label, the cookies look like cookies. The SPACE! cookies are more... spherical. The affects of being heated in zero gravity, presumably. And some of them appear to have colided and merged while baking. One of them even resembles a 'Mickey Mouse' symbol.
    "What are you making?" she asks in a cheerful voice.

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Well I've gotta try a SPACE! cookie," Keli replies with a grin. She, too, infuses the word with the extra enthusiasm. /SPACE!/ "Did you go to space to make them?" Look, Madison's a Jedi, going to space wouldn't be all that weird.

    Then she glowers at her box. "I am /trying/ to build a dancing robot, but it keeps coming apart when it gets to the good part. I think something's weird with the welding tools I use here? Or maybe I'm just not used to them? I don't normally mess up this bad."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Yup!" Madison declares brightly. "Theo - you've met Theo, right? - he lives on Asteroid M, so I took advantage and he helped me arrange for a Zero G space with an oven and- well. Umm. The cookies don't stay on the baking sheet in Zero G, as you see. It makes things real interesting. Getting the brownies to work was hard - I eventually had to seal the dish up in a silicon pouch to stop the batter from just... floating out of it. Same problem with the zuchinni bread."
    Madison peers curiously at the parts in the box before she remarks, "I haven't really tried robotics before. Is it hard?"

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Maybe you could like... make little baking pouches for zero-G?" Keli muses as she reaches out to take a SPACE! cookie. "One side like a baking sheet, the other that'll kind of puff up to keep the cookie in place but let it rise? I mean, that'd work for arepas too, and who could live in space without arepas?"

    She frowns for a moment. /She's/ living without arepas, mostly. It's sad.

    Then she shrugs, and says, "Mmm, it's not hard, but I've been doing it forever so I guess it's harder than I think it is." She flicks a finger at one of the pieces of the robot in the box. "This boy is making my life difficult, though. He doesn't want to swing his hips!" She pauses with the cookie halfway to her mouth. "...Maybe I need to know more about anatomy to make it work, yeah?"

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Yeah, but- spherical cookies are pretty cool!" Madison counters with a broad grin. "Guess how long it takes to bake SPACE! cookies. Guess!" she insists, beaming Keli brightly - while holding up her camera, ready to snap a picture of Keli enjoying the SPACE! cookie. It's all important - for science.
    "Ooo! Like biology stuff? I like biology stuff. I can serve as your model and move my hips! But you'll have to find another way to study internal anatomical structures."

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Umm... 10 minutes?" Keli mumbles around the cookie, raising her eyebrows. It'd have to be shorter for Madison to be so excited, right? It'd /have/ to be. Taking /longer/ to bake cookies wouldn't be exciting at all.

    "Admittedly I was trying to just kinda wing it, like... how am I inventing if I'm just copying what nature already did?" A pause. "But then again who am I to try to one-up nature? From an engineering standpoint, humans walking is pretty cool and amazing."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "TWO. HOURS," Madison replies, proving Keli's hypothesis completely false. It had taken longer to bake cookies in space. MUCH. MUCH. longer. And she had yet to figure out the science on that. "Two whole HOURS. Isn't that wild?!" She grins grins broadly at Keli as she snaps off the photos, before studying the parts in the box again.
    "Humans are pretty cool. It would be interesting to make a non-humanoid dancing robot though. What shape could we make it? Hrm..."
    

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Ay, well, I'm not waiting two whole hours to bake no cookies, I'll tell you what. They better get on that if they want me to take my green gauntlet to space." Keli says this with a grin. "I mean, /worth it/, these are really good. Actually kinda stands to reason, though, I remember abuela always had to adjust recipes we found on the internet 'cause we were high enough up in the mountains. Something about pressure I guess?"

    She considers the thought of a /non/ humanoid robot for a minute. "Hmm. What else dances besides humans... I dunno, but ohhh, I could make a /crab/ robot and make it dance? Dancing crabs are, like, a thing."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Ooo, ooo, ooo!" Madison says excitedly, spreading out her arms, and squatting own - then scuttling back and forth quickly, with little flickers of her arms. "Birds of paradise! Or, or!" She continues to crouch, but now she's doing something akin to semaphore with her arms. "Peacock jumping spiders! They dance too! Lots of dancing options," she suggests - all smiles even as she strightens up again.
    "I need to figure out the science behind the baketime before the science fair. And I'll have to do a fresh round of baking just before the fair so I can bribe all the judges with SPACE! cookies and SPACE! brownies."

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "I mean I'd say that's not fair, but so long as I get one I won't tell anyone," Keli replies with aplomb.

    "Ohh, birds! Yeah, birds dance." She eyes her robot bits, considering. She starts to take the pieces out and lay them on the table. "I'd need some bigger, flatter pieces for bird /or/ crab. Wings or carapace. Hmmmmm."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Or spider! But people don't like spiders. Whatever. Do bees dance? I think bees kinda dance too. I mean - you can //make// almost anything dance." Other than periodically nibbling on a cookie, Madison seems more interested in Keli's project at the moment, rather than her own. "I plan on giving out cookies and brownies and stuff to everyone. The bread came out weird - it's so round it's hard to cut - and the holes from the yeast are soooooo much bigger than they should be."

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "Dancing crabs are a thing on the internet," Keli notes. "But I like birds better, I think. Oooh, if I make it light enough maybe I could make it /fly/." Well, now she's just going off the deep end.

    She lays out her pieces and nods. "I can /definitely/ make this into a bird instead, I need to figure out what to use for feathers, though. Light enough to lift the bird but strong enough to hold it up. Hmm. And... too round to cut? Hunh. Maybe you could, like, make it a bread bowl?"

Madison Evans has posed:
    "But it doesn't have a flat bottom. It would roll around. And if you cut off the bottom to flatten it- well. The soup would probably leak out the bottom without the crust because... just look at the crumb structure on this thing!" Madison retrieves a slice of sourdough to offer to Keli. While artisnal breads have the occassional large bubble in it- this bread is just lousy with them!
    "Should you use... feathers for feathers? Or is that cheating?"

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "I dunno that it's /cheating/, so much as like... not quite in the spirit of the thing? I could use bird bones too, but then that's just getting kinda weird." Keli frowns for a moment. "I'm gonna have to look up some tensile strengths, find out /exactly/ what feathers are made of. I mean, weirdly, tin foil might actually be a good choice I think? But I'll have to check."

    She takes the piece of sourdough and blinks at it. "Oh, yeah, I see what you mean." She takes a bite. "Pretty good though!"

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Oh, it's keratin. Same as scales, and claws, and fingernails," Madison offers brightly, in a helpful tone. She's just a font of useless knowledge sometimes. "I think it'd have to be a pretty thick foil... But I guess it might work? You might need to run some kind of wire down the center of the feathers, to give them some extra stability, though," she muses - her expression going thoughtful. "Sounds like a lot of work..."

Keli Quintela has posed:
    "I mean, yeah, the shaft of the feather is, but what's the actual... fluffy part of the feather...?" Keli frowns for a moment and then shakes her head. "I'll have to think about it either way. And yeah, I mean, it's work, but it's fun! Well... if you enjoy engineering and building robots. Which I do."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Also keratin," Madison insists. "I'm like... ninety percent sure." Which is pretty sure!
    "Can I help you build it so I can learn about robots?" she asks with a hopeful tone. "...I'll bring more baked good," she suggests with a broad grin.

Keli Quintela has posed:
    Keli eyes Madison for a moment, something uncertain flickering through her dark eyes. Then she smiles. "Oh, alright, /fine/. But only if you bring more of the SPACE! cookies."

    She coughs, and then adds, "...Do you know how to weld?"

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Nuh-uh!" Madison answers in a chipper tone. "Show me!" She pulls a stool around, fully prepared to be as attentive a student as possible for her first robotics lesson.
    After all. Learning about tech, and welding will help her with her ultimate goal: building a lightsaber.