Читать книгу Becoming a Counselor - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 35

Every year students who took a science course at Decatur High had to do a science project. Those of us not gifted with scientific minds always scrambled to come up with a project that would not hurt our fragile grades. I took chemistry my junior year and was determined to get ahead on my project before the science fair came around in February. But I knew nothing about how to experiment with chemicals, so I dropped back to biology. Charles Darwin fascinated me, and I decided to do something on mutations. I needed an organism that reproduced quickly and I could easily handle. The answer: fruit flies.

I sent off to a lab for several jars of fruit flies. When they arrived, I bought bananas and set up new colonies from the pupae that came in the original jars. The life cycle of the flies was a few weeks, and they were active breeders. I wondered what would happen if the flies were exposed to radiation while still in a cocoon state. My hypothesis was that they might come out with more than two eyes, or the color of their eyes might change. Fortunately, a friend’s dad was a dentist, and he offered to expose my flies to the X-ray machine in his office.

I did not win a prize for my work, but my grade did not suffer. Happily, the fruit flies were no worse for the wear either—none of their eyes or wings changed. The only negative in the experiment was that some of the subjects escaped and made themselves at home in our house. We had fruit flies around for several weeks longer than my project. My parents thought we could outlast the inconvenience and did not call an exterminator. My mother simply did not buy bananas until the last of the flies buzzed off. Patience paid off.