Middle School · Digital book

The Windowsill Lab

By Sikho

On the first Monday of the Windowsill Project, a seventh-grade science teacher puts a pot of sand on a scale, holds up a seed that weighs almost nothing, and asks a question people argued over for centuries: when a plant grows heavier, where does the extra weight come from? Ten weeks. One south window. Four rules. And one kitchen scale. Follow Imani, Jun and Del as they run a modern version of an experiment from the 1640s while they grow herbs, wake up seeds, watch roots, race leaf disks, build a sealed jar that turns into a swamp and then build one that thrives. Along the way you meet the real science: Van Helmont's willow, Darwin's glass tubes, potato cuttings that flew on the space shuttle, scallions grown on a space station, a bottle garden sealed since 1972, Biosphere 2's missing oxygen and a plant with root rot that four kind people nearly drowned. Every experiment is one you can try with a notebook, a window and a few cups, and the mistakes are in the book too, because in this classroom wrong is data. The scientists, dates and sources are real. The class and its numbers are made up, and a note for grown-ups says exactly which is which, how safety works and what could not be checked. For ages 11 to 14, and for anyone who has ever wondered why a houseplant died. (It was probably the water.)

233 minutes estimated reading

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