Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Blasts Off! Read online

  So what happened?

  By filling the jars with sand and refrigerating them, you created a Mars–like environment. What you were trying to discover is if there were any living microorganisms in this environment. The sugar water heated things up and added a little fuel to the equation (via the sugar). Living organisms need sugar, water, and heat to stay alive.

  WHY IS MARS RED?

  What you’ll need:

  - sand

  - steel wool

  - scissors

  - water

  - a pair of work gloves

  How to do it:

  Pour the sand into a pan. Put on your gloves, then cut up the steel wool and mix it with the sand. Pour enough water in the pan to cover everything. Check the pan every day to see what color its contents become.

  So what happened?

  Oxidation is what happened. Which is to say, left to sit in the water for a few days, the steel wool rusted. Steel wool is made from low carbon steel, which is very similar to iron, which also rusts when it’s exposed to water. Meteorites from Mars that have landed on Earth have been found to have iron in them. Scientists think that at one time there was water on Mars, which caused the iron in Martian rocks to rust, turning the planet a cool shade of red.

  Praise for Frances O’Roark Dowell’s

  FROM THE HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC NOTEBOOKS

  OF PHINEAS L. MacGUIRE

  “A smart, funny read.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Proves that kids can be smart and funny.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Frances O’Roark Dowell is the author of a slew of books for kids, including the Edgar Award–winning Dovey Coe, the Christopher Award–winning and Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Honor Book Shooting the Moon, Where I’d Like To Be, The Secret Language of Girls, The Kind of Friends We Used to Be, Chicken Boy, the Phineas L. MacGuire books, Falling In, and most recently, her teen debut, Ten Miles Past Normal. She has had multiple successes growing mold in her home laboratories, including the beautiful green Moldus refrigerates, the rather icky Scumbus bathatubus, and the downright disgusting Mildewia carpetoria. When she is not cultivating fascinating fungi, she can often be found hunting for slime molds with her young lab assistants, Jack and Will, in the woods of Durham, North Carolina.

  Preston McDaniels is the illustrator of Phineas L. MacGuire … Erupts!, Phineas L. MacGuire … Blasts Off!, and Cynthia Rylant’s Lighthouse Family series. He lives in Aurora, Nebraska.