4th Grade Science Project

Two weeks ago one of my sons begged to enter his 4^th grade science fair, and reluctantly I agreed. My reluctance and my wife’s counsel to say ‘no’ this year was based on our experience last year where we did most of the work maintaining a live ant farm. Yet Peter begged and I finally agreed.

We decided to report on “lactose intolerance” since Peter has to be careful with dairy products.

As feared “Peter’s” Lactose Intolerance Project took a huge amount of MY time. Part of this time was time spent working together, but I also did more after Peter went to bed two different nights. For this time along with my rewording of some of Peter’s work I felt no small measure of guilt—it was supposed to be his project but here I was doing most of the work. As much as I had resisted entering the science fair in the first place, once we had committed, I wanted “his” project to look great.

Without consulting Peter I went hunting for great graphics online and purchased photo paper for all the information pages. I also supplemented the material he gathered with some of my own gathered from additional web sites.

Did you know, for instance, that the bodies of most people radically scale back the production the enzyme (lactase) used to breakdown the primary sugar in dairy products (lactose) just a few after birth? Or that lactose intolerance is directly linked to ethnic background? In a 1972 study published in the Scientific American, 100% of Native Americans, 98% of Thais, 93% of Chinese, and % of African Americans in the study group tested as lactose intolerant. Contrast this with only 12% of Caucasian Americans, 6% of Swiss, and 2% of Swedes. Apparently a chromosome level mutation passed down through Northern European ethnic groups allows them to happily continue to consume large amounts of fresh dairy products long after every other ethnic group would be groaning, gassing, and bloating in misery. And here is an even more intriguing factoid… the same is true for cats! European cats have the mutation as humans allowing them to consume milk when cats from other parts of the world—especially Asian breeds—are lactose intolerant.

Just whose 4^th grade science project was this I wondered as I climbed into bed last night. Then this morning it hit me that twenty-seven years ago my dad helped me build a vacuum out of a coffee can and a small electric fan, and that project all those years ago could really be called his science project. Today, the project Peter turned in was mine… twenty-seven years after the one I received credit for from my science teacher Ms. Kelly.

If things continue to follow this pattern in another 25-30 years Peter will do most of the work for a project that his son or daughter will take to school.

Maybe I don’t need to feel guilty for working so hard last night on “Peter’s” project; maybe I was simply finishing an assignment I received a grade for thirty years ago. And if so... for the record, Ms. Kelly, I tried to do “our” best work.