The Super-Secret Science Club: Case of the Disappearing Glass

by S. C. Davis

  The lab wasn't quite what I was picturing, which was something like a huge squeaky-clean white room filled with tubes of colorful bubbling liquids.

  In Dr. Wyatt's lab, large brown cabinets with thick, black countertops lined every wall, and more set up in rows in the middle of the room. There were sinks, cabinets with glass doors, and many shelves of clear glass containers ranging from beakers the size of buckets down to tiny vials no larger than my pinky finger.

  The thing that surprised me the most about the lab from the second we walked in was the smell. It wasn't the musty, chemical smell I had expected. The air was full of an odd mixture of scents, some quite strong. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what each of the smells were, because there were so many.

  As my eyes travelled around the room, I discovered another shelf full of dark brown glass vials and bottles. The labels said they were all different types of oils. I went to get a closer look, and realized that the smells were coming from each of the oil bottles. There was sunflower, wintergreen, clove, coconut, lavender, and dozens more.

  “What is this, an aromatherapy parlor or something?” Alexandra said jokingly as she walked up beside me. She must have been following her nose as well.

  Her words snapped me out of my trance, and I realized at that moment that the lab had been empty when we walked in. Dr. Wyatt was not there.

  “Should we be in here, you think?” Britta asked, looking over her shoulder as if we were doing something illegal.

  “I'm sure it's okay. The door was open, and plus these are Dr. Wyatt's open office hours,” I reminded them. “Maybe we should just wait here a little while. He could have just gone for a break or something.”

  The others nodded in agreement, and we all spread out to continue exploring the lab. How could we not? Ethan, still the know-it-all he had always been, felt the need to say, “We probably shouldn't touch anything, though.”

  I found myself drawn back to the oils; there were so many different types. I couldn't quite figure out why a physicist would be working with oil in the first place, and why so many unique kinds.

  I noticed a small cabinet with a glass-paned door over the counter where the oils sat. I reached up to open it, but it was locked. Inside were various small bottles of what must have been more expensive or rare oils. Some I recognized from my cooking interests, like truffle oil and saffron oil. Others I had never heard of before.

  One in particular caught my attention. It was on the top shelf by itself, and it was a larger bottle than the rest. The label read “Jasper Oil v. 5”. What in the world was Jasper? A flower, perhaps? And what did “v. 5” mean; version five?

  Just then I heard someone walk into the lab. I turned to find a rather skinny young man with flowing hair the color of burnt sienna, and a thin matching beard.

  Dr. Wyatt was way younger than I was expecting. He looked quite shocked to see six middle-schoolers wandering about his lab, but I suppose I would have been, too.

  “Er, hello there,” he said in a charming accent. Scottish, was it? Irish? “Can I help you?” Definitely Irish.

  Britta stepped forward, as if she were relieved to finally be able to justify the trespassing.

  “Hi, we're seventh graders from Brisby Middle School. We're working on a refraction project for science class, and we learned about you online. Jenna's mom works at the college and told us we could find you here during your office hours today,” she said hastily, as if it were rehearsed.

  “Ah,” the man said, nodding. “You're looking for Dr. Wyatt. I'm a student of his, actually. My name's Kieran.”

  That explained his youthful appearance. Britta blushed at the mistake, though I'm sure we all had made it.

  “Do you know when he'll be back? We just wanted to ask him a couple questions. I'm sure he's very, very busy,” Alexandra said, appearing to sense Britta’s nervousness.

  “Ha,” Kieran said, rolling his eyes. “Wouldn't we all like to know the answer to that question?” We glanced at each other, not comprehending his meaning.

  “Dr. Wyatt suddenly decided to take a vacation! In the middle of the semester. Without any warning,” he said flatly.

  He was smiling, but the tone of his voice implied that he was somehow burdened by Dr. Wyatt's absence.

  “So, in addition to having to put my own research on hold, guess who's having to substitute teach Dr. Wyatt's classes? Oh, that would be me as well!” he said in mock surprise.

  We each giggled uncomfortably, not sure if we were supposed to find him funny or pity him.

  “Last I saw him was two weeks ago. He had a couple visitors stop by here one afternoon, and then the next day he was gone. Not sure who they were, but they must have irked him to the point of needing a mental holiday,” Kieran explained as he began to tidy up a workspace.

  “Ah,” he said as he waved his hand dismissively. “I'm sure he's got his reasons. Just wish he had warned me, is all.”

  “How do you know he went on vacation? Did he leave a note?” Ethan asked. I elbowed him, feeling like that was none of our business, but Kieran didn't seem to mind.

  “Yeah, he did actually. It's right there.” He gestured to another workspace near the oils, where an open notebook sat. I was standing right by it, so I stole a peek.

  Kieran,

  Sorry to do this to you pal, but I need a little getaway. I'll return before the end of the semester. Please take care of my lectures and go easy on those kids.

  We'll pick up our discussion about your theory when I return.

  Cheers,

  Dr. Wyatt

  It sounded genuine enough. It also sounded somewhat...sad. What in the world would make someone of Dr. Wyatt's position just want to leave everything behind for a while, especially if it meant burdening someone who looked up to him?

  As I was about to turn back to Kieran, I noticed something else scrawled at the bottom of the page. It was in the same handwriting, but a lot sloppier, as if it had been written hastily.

  Changed my mind about clove and balsam. DO NOT add these to Jasper Five, add coconut and shea instead.

  What in the world were these guys doing, making bubble baths and lotions? I thought their work was supposed to be pretty important, but it wasn't looking like it at this point.

  “Well since you made the trip out here on a Sunday, is there some way I could help you? I'm certainly not an expert like Dr. Wyatt, but I do study this stuff all day every day,” he said with a sort of overwhelmed laugh.

  Britta looked back at us as if for permission. I nodded, and she turned back to Kieran.

  “Sure, that would be great. We saw an experiment where they make a glass beaker disappear by submerging it into oil.”

  Oh, duh...oil. I thought to myself. Maybe that's what all these oils were about, perhaps testing the different properties of each? What was it Ethan had said, the “refractive index” maybe?

  “We want to do a project sort of like that because our challenge is to make something disappear, but we wanted to come up with something a little more unique than that same experiment,” Britta said.

  “Any ideas?” Chase said, sounding like he was trying to speed things up. I heard his stomach growl. That explained his impatience.

  “Hmm.” Kieran thought for a minute. He glanced over at all the oils, then back at us as if he were trying to decide if we could be trusted with something. He finally shrugged and said, “Ah, what the heck.” He grabbed a key ring from his bench drawer and started toward the oil cabinet.

  “As it so happens, one of the projects we're working on right now is basically the same thing: how to make something invisible. Solar panels, to be exact. We're trying to find a way to make solar panels invisible so that they can be placed on more surfaces.

  “Right now they're somewhat limited to rooftops or open fields. But there’s a new technology being developed for transparent solar panels. They don’t have the bluish-black squares on them like you’re used to seeing. They look just like regular glass. They’re
called transparent luminescent solar concentrators, or TLSC’s.”

  “Does that mean regular glass, like windows, could be replaced with that stuff?” I asked. I vaguely remembered hearing something about it on PBS a while back.

  “It sure does. It’s got great promise, especially for big skyscrapers that are pretty much entirely glass. All that glass could be replaced with a TLSC to collect solar energy, and it wouldn’t look any different,” Kieran said.

  We raised our eyebrows and nodded, impressed with the idea. I wondered, though, how Dr. Wyatt and all the oils played a role in the technology. The way Kieran described it, it sounded like the TLSC’s were developed elsewhere.

  “So, why do you need to make solar panels invisible, then? If there’s already a way to make them transparent,” Britta asked, sounding almost hesitant to put him on the spot.

  “Well,” Kieran began with a chuckle,” Dr. Wyatt’s the kind of guy who’s always thinking about how to make a great thing greater. When the TLSC technology came out, the first thing he did was criticize it. ‘Well that’s all good and well for buildings with tons of windows, but what about everything else?’” Kieran said, mimicking Dr. Wyatt in what I assumed was his best “Dr. Wyatt” voice.

  “He decided transparent wasn’t going to be good enough. He wanted to go one step further. He wanted to make the panels invisible,” he said. “That way, they could be installed almost anywhere without covering up whatever surface they’re on.”

  So much for lotions and bubble baths…this sounded like some serious stuff. I laughed a little at how far off the mark I had been. Kieran reached up to unlock the cabinet, and we drew in closer to see what he was going to bring out.

  “Since you already know about the simple oil experiment, I'm sure you understand that it works because light doesn’t bend when passing through oil to clear glass,” he said.

  We all nodded to confirm. Ethan nodded especially hard, wanting Kieran to be sure that he already understood.

  “Well,” Kieran continued, “Dr. Wyatt and I have been experimenting with the idea of something called ‘metamaterials’. These are just—”

  “Man-made materials engineered to have properties that natural materials don’t,” Ethan interrupted. “Usually for manipulating electromagnetic waves.”

  Kieran laughed, equally surprised and delighted by Ethan’s intelligence. The rest of us twisted our faces at Ethan like he had just spoken a foreign language.

  “Would you care to translate?” Chase said to Kieran, sounding annoyed. Ethan didn’t seem to notice.

  “Your friend’s right. Basically, metamaterials are usually constructed from stuff like metal or plastic. They’re put together in tiny patterns that interfere with and change the waves of whatever they’re meant to intercept; light, sound, and so forth,” Kieran said. My brain was working overtime trying to keep up.

  “The idea is that the right metamaterials could actually divert visible light around an object. And since you understand refraction, I’m assuming you know that the only reason we can see objects is because they absorb and reflect certain wavelengths of visible light.”

  We nodded, then Ethan chimed in again.

  “And if light is bending around an object instead of bouncing off of or being absorbed by it, it means we wouldn’t even be able to see the object.”

  “Correct again!” said Kieran cheerily.

  The idea was interesting enough, but I was already starting to feel my mind slip. It was too much for me to grasp. I was no physicist. I was staring at the bottles of oils, and wondering what it would be like if I were the scientist, and this were my lab.

  Alexandra must have seen my eyes glaze over, because she gently elbowed me. I focused back in on Kieran.

  “Dr. Wyatt decided to try to make something that would function like metamaterials, as far as being able to manipulate light waves, but without constructing anything at all. Instead, he started looking in to mixing natural substances.”

  Ethan was clearly far more excited about this than the rest of us. I was still waiting for it all to click, wondering if it ever would.

  “Long story short,” Kieran said— I had to laugh at that paradox— “Dr. Wyatt found that a certain mixture of oils could arrange its molecules into a pattern similar to what’s seen in metamaterials.”

  This ‘metamaterial’ stuff was still a great mystery to me, but I was starting to understand the purpose of the oil collection.

  “The effect of the oil is really quite simple. It doesn’t deflect any light around anything. Rather, it harnesses the light once it reaches the oil, and forces it to maintain its angle. Usually once light reaches oil, it would refract, since the refractive index of air is different from oil.

  “But this oil we’ve developed forces the light to maintain course. It neither reflects nor refracts. And once it’s passed through the oil to the glass on the other side, we already know it doesn’t refract. It still continues straight on through. So, no refraction means?”

  “No visibility,” Ethan concluded, looking proud to be the one to deliver the punchline.

  Kieran exhaled deeply, like he’d just completed a marathon. He looked at us hopefully.

  “You follow me so far?” he said.

  Ethan turned to look at us, too, as if he himself were one of Dr. Wyatt’s students. We nodded.

  “Excellent!” he said, brightening. “So we’ve got a formula that makes the glass totally invisible. But the challenge is that we can't have a surface that's all oily, right? So we're trying to find a way to make it dry but still retain the refractive qualities we need.

  “I thought we were onto something before Dr. Wyatt left, but he must have thought of some reason it wouldn't work. He left me some instructions to do something different.”

  I assumed based on the note I’d read that the “something” they’d been on to was adding clove and balsam. And just as Kieran said, Dr. Wyatt had, for some reason, instructed him to use coconut and shea instead.

  “It's not perfect yet, but if you guys are looking for something that will impress your teacher, maybe you want to see this anyway,” Kieran said.

  As he spoke, he pulled down the bottle from the cabinet labeled “Jasper Oil v. 5”.

  “This is the latest version of the oil combinations we're testing. It's named Jasper after Dr. Wyatt's childhood dog,” he said.

  “Aww,” we girls cooed.

  “This particular mixture is almost exactly what we need. It does make the glass completely and totally invisible, but the problem is that the oil doesn't dry the way we want it to. It eventually evaporates.”

  Kieran carefully unscrewed the bottle cap, which doubled as a glass dropper with a rubber tip. The air filled with a swirl of fragrances. I smelled wintergreen, gardenia, truffle, and fish oils among others. A very peculiar bouquet of scents, to be sure.

  With the dropper, Kieran added a bit of the Jasper Oil to an empty Petri dish that was sitting nearby, then he pulled a sponge brush out of a drawer.

  “Watch this,” he said.

  He coated the sponge brush with oil from the dish, and began stroking it onto the flask. At first, the outline of the flask rippled and waved, like an asphalt horizon on a hot day. Then, seconds later, it vanished completely. Kieran looked around at all of our reactions, and was clearly happy with each of the dropped jaws he saw.

  “It just…disappeared!” Alexandra said in disbelief. “I can't believe it, I mean, I can't see it at all!”

  “I never imagined anything like this would be possible,” Britta said, seeming to be in a trance.

  “You could almost imagine it being used for some bad stuff, if it got into the wrong hands,” Wes observed.

  Kieran nodded. “Absolutely. But for now, this mixture only does this to clear glass. Wouldn't work on anything else. Still pretty cool though, right?”

  “Yeah, amazing,” I said.

  “Can I touch it?” Ethan asked. I had to laugh at the irony, considering he was the
one who insisted we didn't touch anything.

  “Sure, if you can find it!” Kieran said with a laugh.

  Ethan pointed his finger and slowly reached in the direction of the flask. When his finger made contact, I expected to be able to see the flask move. But all I saw was the tip of Ethan's finger bending up slightly, as if all on its own.

  “Wow!” Ethan said as he pulled his finger away.

  “But look,” Kieran nodded back to the flask. We leaned in closely, waiting for something to happen, and then we saw it. A smudgy fingerprint, floating in mid-air like a ghost. It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. Ethan held his finger up to show us the oily sheen left on the tip of it.

  Kieran picked up a towel, reached for the flask and put it into a sink full of soapy water. It slowly became visible again as it bobbed up and down. He tossed the sponge brush in the trash and placed the Petri dish in the sink as well.

  “You should probably wash your hands, kid. No guarantee your finger won't fall off if you don't,” Kieran said with a wink. He turned back to look at the rest of us and smiled. “You know what? How about you guys take this with you. Show your class. They'll love it.” He held out the bottle of Jasper Oil v. 5 to me.

  “But, this is your big research project, we can't take this,” I said, trying to hand the bottle back to him.

  Kieran waved his hand again. “Nah, that's version five. We've got other bottles of that lying around, plus I keep a detailed record of exactly what's in it so I can replicate it. We're onto version six now, so this one's not so important anymore.”

  “Cool!” Chase said, taking the bottle from me and looking at it like it was gold. “What's different about version six?”

  “Well, like I said, I added a couple things that Dr. Wyatt had suggested in some notes he left for me,” Kieran said.

  Coconut and shea? I wanted to ask, but I didn't want him to know I'd been snooping earlier.