Bringing Down the Mouse by Ben Mezrich Page B

entry point, completing its first revolution around the interior lip of the bowl. He’d make another mental note again as the ball finished its second roll around the bowl, and the rest, as Charlie liked to say, was math, math, and more math.
    The real science behind the marble’s descent to thecenter of the bowl was actually so sophisticated that Charlie wouldn’t have been able to explain it without the help of a textbook, and maybe his parents. You had gravity pulling the marble down toward the bottom of the bowl, the horizontal velocity of Jeremy’s initial push fighting that downward motion, the curve of the bowl adding another horizontal element, the friction from the bowl’s surface slowing the descent, the revolutions of the marble itself causing more chaos along the way—but none of this really mattered in the scope of Charlie and Jeremy’s project. Their project was actually quite simple, a ball and a bowl, even if it was an illustration of something incredibly complex.
    â€œAnd there it goes,” Jeremy continued, squinting down into the salad bowl as the marble spun down to the bottom, then finally rolled to a stop. “Splashdown!”
    Charlie grinned at Jeremy’s dramatics. When they finally presented their project, they would certainly use terms like that—splashdown, impact, upper atmosphere—because it was a lot more fun than just talking about a marble rolling around a bowl. Pretending that the marble was a satellite breaking orbit and plummeting to the earth made the project interesting and, really, was where the idea had come from in the first place.
    It was actually the continuation of an experimentthat Charlie had been working on over the summer, the results of which he’d submitted to a statewide science competition a few weeks before school began. Charlie had only won second prize with his research; first prize had gone to a kid who’d built a functioning volcano using modeling clay, baking soda, and food dye, as clichéd a project as you could find, but admittedly pretty compelling to watch. Still, even second place had inspired Charlie to continue working on the project, so when Mrs. Hennigan suggested that her sixth graders pair up and do an independent project to show to the rest of the students at the end of the semester, it had seemed natural for Charlie and Jeremy to delve into the ball and bowl.
    â€œSplashdown is a good guess,” Charlie commented, “because in real life, there’d be an eighty-five percent chance it would land in water.”
    It was Charlie’s dad who had first told him the story of Skylab, a space station/satellite that back in the late seventies had become a front page headline when it had broken orbit and crash-landed off the coast of Australia. As it fell, predicting where the satellite/station was going to impact the earth had become a nationwide sensation, and a couple of magazines had even offered prizes to anyone who got their hands on a piece of thewreckage. Charlie had immediately seized on the story as an inspiration for his science project.
    It was that event that Charlie was trying to illustrate with his ball and his bowl. Jeremy was along for the ride; he was a good partner because though he wasn’t quite as skilled at math as Charlie, he was sharp enough to quickly follow along.
    â€œIn real life,” Jeremy responded, “this marble would be the size of a speck of dust and this bowl should be as big as the entire room. And in real life, Finn Carter wouldn’t have kidnapped you from the lunchroom and dragged you off to god knows where and then sworn you to secrecy.”
    Charlie rolled his eyes as he opened a notepad on the desk next to the bowl and held up a pen.
    â€œHe didn’t kidnap me, he just wanted to talk in private. Give me the first and second time marks.”
    â€œIt’s 4.3 and 3.2. Yeah, right, he wanted your advice on swimming the backstroke. Oh,