GALILEO: It’s the same idea as when you shuffle your feet on a rug, then touch somebody else and give off a shock of static electricity.
NEWTON: But, again, not so much with geckos.
GALILEO: The plasma globe, or plasma light, was invented by Nikola Tesla in the late 1800s. It’s a glass sphere filled with gases—
NEWTON: —such as neon—
GALILEO: —and also has an electrode in the center. The electrode charges the neon, and that creates energy. You see that energy as strings of colorful light. Different gases create different colors.
NEWTON: Like with the Van de Graaff generator, it’s safe to touch, so long as you’re standing on something that isn’t metal. When Twitch saw the student light up the fluorescent lightbulb, that was because the electricity passed from the plasma ball, through the student and the lightbulb, then out through the museum worker and into the ground.
GALILEO: Another thing you can do is make the electricity in the plasma ball move by touching the outside of the ball with your finger.
NEWTON: Geckos don’t have fingers. We have digits.
GALILEO: Some geckos don’t have much of a brain.
NEWTON: That’s not a nice thing to say to your brother.
GALILEO: I didn’t say you. I said some.
NEWTON: It was clear what you meant.
GALILEO: You’re too sensitive. Let’s move on to the Bernoulli air pressure table. Daniel Bernoulli lived in the 1700s, but his observations about air pressure helped people develop airplanes—
NEWTON: Many, many years later.
GALILEO: Yes, Newton, many, many years later. On the Bernoulli air pressure table, air is forced out of nozzles tilted in different directions. Where air is moving faster, there is less pressure.
NEWTON: That means you can place things like Ping-Pong balls or golf balls or beach balls in the stream of air, and they’ll float.
GALILEO: And they stay floating even if the nozzle is tilted to the side—
NEWTON: —unless there’s a squirrel running across the table.
GALILEO: Yes, as long as the stream of air is not disturbed, the blowing air has lower pressure than the surrounding air, and—straight up and down, or off to the side—the object placed in that area of lower pressure defies gravity and rises.
NEWTON: With an airplane, there’s no Bernoulli air pressure table. It’s the shape of the wings that causes air to flow faster over the wing than under, which causes lower pressure above than below, which causes lift.
GALILEO: I already said that.
NEWTON: You didn’t say that Sir Isaac Newton helped develop this principle.
GALILEO: No, I didn’t mention that.
NEWTON: Which is why people named the Fig Newton cookie after him.
GALILEO: The Fig Newton cookie was not named after Sir Isaac Newton.
NEWTON: Well, it wasn’t named after Galileo Galilei.
GALILEO: It’s not important.
NEWTON: It is to the people who eat the cookie.
GALILEO: All right, then.
NEWTON: You don’t always have to have the last word.
GALILEO: Fine. You can have the last word this time.
NEWTON: Good. So that is the true story behind what Twitch saw at the science museum.
GALILEO: The Galileo Museum and Science Center.
NEWTON: You said I could have the last word.
GALILEO: So long as you’re accurate.
NEWTON: So that is the true story behind what Twitch saw at the Galileo Museum and Science Center.
GALILEO: The end.
Read more books about Twitch and his adventures!
“A whole lot of fun.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Nominated for seven child-voted state awards
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Squirrel in the Museum Page 6
