Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed! by Frances O'Roark Dowell Page A

need:
    â€”
rotting tree bark
    â€”
paper towels
    â€”
water
    â€”
plastic container
    â€”
plastic wrap
    How to do it:
    Grab some rotting bark from your backyard or a tree near your school. Put a paper towel at the bottom of a plastic container, put the bark on top of the paper towel, and cover the bark with water. Cover the container with plastic wrap. The following day, dump out the water and re-cover the container. Make sure the paper towels stay damp throughout the process. Wait a few weeks and you should see some lovely slime crawling across your bark. You can also try this experiment with dead leaves or rotting wood. If slime doesn’t grow on your first sample, try bark from different trees and see which ones are the real slime magnets.
    So what happened?
    Slime mold loves tree bark because as the bark rots, pieces of it get loose and trap moisture. And as we know, mold loves moisture. By creating a moist environment for your bark, you create excellent conditions for slime mold to thrive.

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    Check out more adventures from the
best fourth-grade scientist ever.

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    My name is Phineas Listerman MacGuire.
    Feel free to call me Mac.
    Some people even call me Big Mac, since I’m tall for my age.
    I don’t mind being called Phin or Phineas. I had a soccer coach last year who only called me MacGuire.
    I thought that was sort of cool.
    He never called me Listerman, incase you were wondering.
    No one calls me Listerman. Not unless they want to get seriously slimed.
    I am a scientist. In fact, I am probably the best fourth-grade scientist in all of Woodbrook Elementary School. I am an expert in the following areas of scientific inquiry:
    All molds and fungi, particularly slime molds of every variety
Volcanoes and other things that explode
Bug identification
    Up until yesterday I had no idea that I was a potential scientific genius when it came to astronomy, which is, if you didn’t know, the study of planets and stars and everything up in space.
    Don’t get me wrong. I have read at least sixty-seven astronomy books and am famous for having eaten a board book about the planets when I was two.
    It’s just astronomy wasn’t one of my big things.
    Until I heard about Space Camp.
    It all started with Stacey Windham, and Share and Stare.
    You would think that as a scientist, I would know five hundred times as much about space as Stacey Windham, a bossy girl in my class who thinks she is the queen and has never once shown any interest in anything besides being mean to people.
    So how did she know that there are earthquakes on Mars before I did?
    Except on Mars they’re called Mars-quakes.
    You’d think I would have heard about that.
    â€œSome scientists think that Mars at one time had titanic plates in it, just like Earth does,” Stacey reported for Share and Stare yesterday morning. Share and Stare is what Mrs. Tuttle, our teacher, has instead of Show and Tell. For Share and Stare you have to bring something that’s connected to what we’re studying at school. We have just started a unit on space, and Stacey waved an article torn out of a magazine while she talked.
    â€œI’m interested in titanic plates because I have seen the movie
Titanic
four times,” Stacey continued. “Even though it is rated PG-13.”
    A bunch of girls gasped. I raised my hand. Stacey nodded at me like she was the teacher.

    â€œI think you mean ‘tectonic plates,’” I informed her. “Tectonic plates are what shift around and cause earthquakes.”
    â€œWell, I’ve still seen
Titanic
four times. And it’s rated PG-13.” Stacey sneered at me. “I bet you’ve never seen one single PG-13 movie.”
    Half of my classmates waved their hands in the air. “Oooh! I have! I have!”
    Later I asked Stacey where she’d found the article, and she showed me a copy of a magazine called
Astronomy.
“It’s my