Jack and the Geniuses

by Bill Nye

  “Me,” she replied. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” he asked. His eyes scanned the floor, then the ceiling. Anything to avoid her gaze. “Nothing! Not really, anyway.”

  He grabbed the vitamins and tossed them back to her. “Please,” he said. “These are useless. All they do is produce expensive and colorful . . . never mind.”

  Ava and Matt had come out of their rooms. I was leaning against the wall, watching. “What’s going on, Hank?” my brother asked.

  Now Hank stared at Min.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Well, you see, I can’t really say too much . . . secrets and things of that sort . . . but an associate of mine has run into a little problem with one of her business ventures . . . A big problem, really. Massive. The future of energy could very well be at stake.”

  “And?” Ava asked.

  “Well, the three of you proved surprisingly useful down at McMurdo. Ava, I was amazed. Matt, you astounded me.” My brother looked happy enough to cry. “Even you were helpful, Jack.” He stopped. Maybe he saw my reaction. Or maybe he just realized his mistake on his own. Either way, he corrected himself. “No, especially you, Jack. And, well, I’m wondering if you three wouldn’t mind coming out to Hawaii to . . . well . . . help me?”

  While Min explained to Hank that this was completely irresponsible and that there was no way she was going to let us fly off to Hawaii after we’d just gotten home from Antarctica, my chest swelled with pride. Matt, Ava, and I looked at one another, and in that silence we said everything. We’d never been to Hawaii, and another trip with Hank sounded a lot more interesting than sitting around our apartment. So we split up, returned to our rooms, and started to pack.

  THIS IS REALITY, PEOPLE!

  One of the main rules of Bill Nye the Science Guy was that the show had to focus on real science and technology. No jetpacks or teleporters. We decided to use the same approach with Jack and the Geniuses. So even though some of the inventions and devices might seem a little weird or wild, they are based in reality. Here are a few of our favorites.

  SLIPPERY WINDOWS: Remember when Jack loses his grip while trying to climb up to the balcony? The material that causes him to fall is based on a substance called SLIPS, which was invented by a Harvard University chemist named Joanna Aizenberg. Her inspiration was the slick stuff the pitcher plant uses to force flies to slide down into its trap. She has envisioned a range of possible uses, including permanently nonstick surfaces or coatings that could prevent ice from building up on airplane wings.

  FRED: We’re sure you’ve seen a drone or two. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have one yourself. Our inspiration for Fred is AirDog, a flying robot that captures video and can follow a mountain biker pedaling full speed by tracking the Wi-Fi signal in the rider’s smartphone. This should remind you of a scene in the book . . . we just don’t want to say which one in case you’re cheating and reading this part first!

  SHELLY: A kid building her own submarine—impossible, right? Not exactly. A seventeen-year-old named Justin Beckerman constructed his own submersible in the basement of his parents’ home using mostly spare parts. And his parents actually let him test the submarine in the lake behind their house, too—with Justin inside! He dove ten feet and cruised near the bottom for thirty minutes. And no, it did not leak.

  HUMAN CATAPULTS: Genius is applied in some of the strangest ways, and this is one such example. First of all, human catapults really do exist. But they are purely for thrills. Our favorite version was developed by a mechanical engineer to launch people into lakes and other large bodies of water. Up onto buildings? Not yet. But maybe Hank will get that working eventually.

  SELF-DRIVING CARS: You’ll probably be riding in one of these when you’re older. The cars are basically robots packed with cameras, radars, and other sensors that collect loads of information about their surroundings. Advanced computer programs churn through all this data and, among other things, decide whether it’s safe for the car to keep cruising or if it should stop (or swerve) to avoid a collision. And yes, we both want one.

  ROBOLEGS: Technically these are known as exoskeletons. Think of them as motorized suits. Some encase a person’s entire body, while others cover only their legs or arms. In each instance, the motors and metal in the robotic armor do the work of our muscles and bones. Today, engineers are developing robotic legs that will help soldiers carry heavy packs over long distances without getting tired and will allow certain wheelchair-bound individuals to walk upright. The most famous exoskeleton is the Iron Man suit . . . but that high-flying, laser-firing model may just be impossible.

  SNOWGOING: While a snowblowing vehicle might not be able to achieve the same speeds as Hank’s invention, the flexible, inflatable material he uses is inspired by reality. For more than a decade, scientists have been developing materials that could eventually form the walls of inflatable space habitats. These materials would have to be tough enough to withstand strikes from the debris that circles Earth. The bits and pieces of broken satellites and abandoned stations known as space junk travel so fast that even a pebble-sized fragment can punch a hole in the wall of a spacecraft.

  TEN ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS ABOUT ANTARCTICA

  Antarctica is a strange and fantastic place, and not only because it’s covered in ice. There are also some unusual rules in this continent at the bottom of the world.

  When humans find new territory, we tend to fight over it. Even though Antarctica is one of the coldest, driest, and windiest places on Earth, we started to do just that down at the South Pole. So in 1959, a group of nations signed the Antarctic Treaty, which established the continent as a scientific preserve. Basically, everyone agreed not to conduct any business or military activity down there, and to focus strictly on research. That’s one of the reasons Hank calls it “a scientific paradise.” There have been more treaties since then, and in a loose kind of way, different nations are laying claim to certain territories by setting up bases. The United States base at McMurdo Station, where our story is set, is one such example.

  We hope this book inspires you to do some research of your own on this fabulous portion of our planet. Once you start learning about the South Pole, you’ll probably have about a thousand questions. So we thought we would address the most important ones first.

  1. DO THEY REALLY HAVE GOOD PIZZA? Yes! In the past, the kitchen at McMurdo Station served meals only four times a day. But scientists keep strange hours. Sometimes they work out in the field for twenty-four hours, and then get back to the base at four o’clock in the morning, completely famished. So, to help out the scientists, the base changed its rules and introduced twenty-four-hour pizza. They even have those nice insulated bags to keep the slices warm while the scientists travel out onto the ice. And the researchers we spoke with swear that the pizza’s just as good cold.

  2. HOW IS IT DARK TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY IN THE WINTER? That’s a tricky one. If you were to draw a line between the North Pole and the South Pole, straight through the center of Earth, that line would be the planet’s axis. Every day, Earth completes one full turn around this axis. As a result of this turn, we have night and day. The South Pole is covered in darkness part of the year because Earth is tilted slightly. During the summer, the planet’s bottom section, right around the tip of the axis, is constantly facing the sun. So even when Earth completes a full spin, the South Pole never turns away from those rays. In the winter, as the planet moves along its annual track around the sun, the bottom of the world is tilted away from the light. So for those few months, the South Pole is trapped in darkness. And it’s cold. And windy. And totally brutal.

  3. WHAT HAPPENS TO A COMPASS AT THE SOUTH POLE? First of all, there are actually two poles: the geographic one and the magnetic one. The geographic South Pole is the very bottom of that axis we just discussed. If this imaginary axis were, say, a very large broom handle running through the middle of the planet, then the broom would pop out the bottom at the geographic South P
ole. The top would stick out at the North Pole. And Earth would spin around the handle. But here’s where things get a little tricky. The inside, or core, of Earth is largely made of iron, which churns as Earth turns, creating a magnetic field. That’s why compasses work. The needle in a compass lines up with that magnetic field. But the spinning iron also sloshes a little inside Earth. Because of this slow sloshing, the magnetic field does not quite align with Earth’s spin axis, and so the magnetic poles end up in different spots than the geographic poles. Also, at the magnetic South Pole, the field lines aren’t quite going north. You can imagine them rising up out of the planet instead. Then they start curving and heading north. So at the exact magnetic pole, a standard compass would not work effectively. But at the geographic South Pole, or anywhere else in Antarctica, a standard compass would still reveal north, south, east, and west. That’s why Jack is able to use his compass as the group cruises over the ice in chapter 14. He and the geniuses are still far away from the precise magnetic South Pole.

  4. DO THEY ACTUALLY SUGGEST PACKING CANDY? Ah, right, back to the important matters. Yes, they really do recommend that researchers bring candy out into the field with them. Scientists burn a great many calories while working on the ice, and candy—or sugar—is one of the ways they quickly restore their energy reserves. Apparently it’s not always very good, though. McMurdo often gets shipments of expired treats that nobody else wants.

  5. HOW CAN YOU GET DEHYDRATED WITH ALL THE SNOW AROUND? Yes, that’s a weird one. But even though the scientists are surrounded by frozen water, much of Antarctica is actually desert. The air is so dry it sucks the moisture right out of your body, and visitors often complain of chapped skin.

  6. DID THE ORIGINAL EXPLORERS EAT PUPPIES? Dogs, penguins, seals—they ate anything that would allow them to survive. They definitely didn’t have twenty-four-hour pizza.

  7. IS ANTARCTICA MELTING? The enormous sheets of ice that surround the continent melt and refreeze each year. Some scientists worry that climate change could force these ice sheets to melt even faster and cause big problems. The West Antarctic ice sheet, for example, is bigger than Mexico, and if that chunk of ice were to fall into the Southern Ocean, sea levels across the world could rise, causing serious damage to coastal cities.

  8. DO SCIENTISTS REALLY LOOK FOR CREATURES UNDER THE ICE? Yes, definitely. While we don’t know of any marine life-forms that can convert saltwater into freshwater like the creatures in our story, scientists are always searching for new species in the dark, cold waters below the ice. One of our favorites is the sea pig, which is four to six inches long and looks like a cross between an empanada and a terribly swollen, twenty-toed foot. Strangely enough, it is also a member of the sea cucumber family.

  9. WHAT DOES ANTARCTICA HAVE TO DO WITH OTHER PLANETS? The Dry Valleys in the mountains near McMurdo Station are, well, extremely dry, and often covered with gravel instead of snow. The conditions are somewhat similar to Mars, so researchers have tested equipment in the Dry Valleys that they hope to use one day on the Red Planet. Scientists who study Europa—one of Jupiter’s moons—also travel to Antarctica for research. An enormous sheet of ice covers Europa, but underneath that ice lies a deep ocean that could be teeming with life. Scientists hope that by studying the ice-covered seas around Antarctica, they may be able to learn more about that distant moon. Plus it’s a much shorter flight.

  10. DO PEOPLE SWIM IN THE WATERS OF ANTARCTICA? Yes, but only the brave ones.

  THE DENSITY DIFFERENCE

  BY BILL NYE

  One of the key ideas in our story revolves around density, or the number of particles of a material packed into a given amount of space. The plot hinges on the density difference between frozen water and liquid water, and between saltwater and freshwater. For the first two, you conduct a density experiment every time you pop an ice cube into a glass of water. The ice cube floats, right? This happens because there are fewer particles of water packed into that little cube than there would be in a cube of liquid water of the same size. That means the ice is less dense than the surrounding water in the glass, and as a result, it floats.

  To see the density difference between saltwater and freshwater, here is a famous experiment that you can carry out at home—without putting anyone in danger.

  MATERIALS

  A glass baking dish

  Tap water

  A measuring spoon

  1 tablespoon of salt

  A glass of tap water

  Food coloring

  STEPS

  1. Fill a glass baking dish halfway with freshwater. Tap water is fine.

  2. Put 1 tablespoon of salt into the glass of tap water and stir it well. Add a little extra salt if you’re feeling lucky.

  3. Add a dash of food coloring to the glass of salted water. I like blue.

  4. Now slowly pour the salty water into the dish. Slowly, please!

  The salty blue water sinks to the bottom, and stays sunk. You can see the density difference for yourself. Thus saltwater is denser than freshwater. This is not just a fun fact; it is critical to the health of the world’s oceans, which are made of both freshwater and saltwater. The sinking saltwater helps drive circulation within the ocean, and powers underwater currents as well. Some scientists call this movement of saltwater and freshwater the ocean’s conveyor belt, because it moves around so much heat and so many materials.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As a kid, I was greatly influenced by Edward Stratemeyer, who created the fictional Tom Swift, which led to the life of the equally fictional Tom Swift Jr. By means of various writers, Tom Swift Jr. and his buddy Bud Barclay used science to create technologies that seemed out of reach, but still reasonable. Although I could only imagine flying labs, diving seacopters, and outposts in space, the thing was, I really could imagine them. My dad called himself Ned Nye, Boy Scientist, as a means to inspire us I guess. My mom was a remarkable puzzle solver and was recruited to work on the notorious Enigma code during the Second World War. She believed girls could do just about anything. Like many young aspiring scientists, I had fantastic teachers: Mrs. McGonagle, Mr. Lawrence, Ms. Hrushka, Mr. Morse, and especially Mr. Lang. He got me enthralled with physics and engineering.

  I very much want you to have a chance to imagine your own remarkable futures. I want to give you a chance to explore and address world-sized problems—let’s call them opportunities. I want you to read books. This task was beyond me. But then I met Greg Mone. He is the genius behind Jack et al. Greg took my rudimentary ideas and made them into something wonderful. Greg and I hope you enjoy these adventures. We hope they give you an idea or two so that you can go out there and change the world. —BILL NYE

  Nika, Clare, Eleanor, Dylan. Mathias and Maureen. Don, Treat Yourself Nails, and Nina, for workspace. Pops, who would’ve loved this one. Scottish. Pie in the Sky. BtB. Jet, for logic. Nasuni. Dr. Schmidt, for amazing anecdotes. Janet Zade and all my school supporters. Haney, Cantor and Mosher at PopSci, for YBW?! Marc and Nick. Jen Carlson. Howard Reeves and the amazing Abrams crew. And of course, Mr. Nye! Thank you all. —GREGORY MONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  BILL NYE is a scientist and media personality best known for his children’s television show, Bill Nye the Science Guy. As a science educator, Nye has appeared on numerous television programs, including Larry King Live, Real Time with Bill Maher, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Inside Amy Schumer, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and Late Night with Seth Myers. He currently splits his time between New York City and Los Angeles. Follow him online at www.billnye.com.

  GREGORY MONE is a novelist, science journalist, and speaker who has written several books for children, including Fish, Dangerous Waters: An Adventure on the Titanic and The Truth About Santa. Mone is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, with Susan Cain. He lives on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

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