taxonomites | 003: [visual/location: across the hall from Kate and Spencer's apartment] Where there's smoke...

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003: [visual/location: across the hall from Kate and Spencer's apartment] Where there's smoke...

[Backdated forever because I fail at putting things up on time]

For a long moment, the tablet's visual showed nothing but a grey-white haze, eventually resolving into swirls and billows of smoke. There was the sound of coughing, and a lot of handwaving, and anyone who walked by outside would have seen a small plume of pale smoke streaming through an open window.

Eventually the smoke cleared and a triumphant Alexis appeared on the screen, smiling widely. "I think the smoke bomb worked that time, Mr. Smecker."

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"I'd say fu-- for sure," Paul says, squinting at the screen and the haze of smoke filling it.

"Alright, so class is in session: tell teacher what went into your bomb, and tell me something you learned as a result. I can think of one thing I've learned just watching your broadcast."

"Potassium nitrate and table sugar in a roughly 60/40 ratio," she answered promptly, waving away some more of the smoke. Opening a couple windows had helped tremendously. She looked a little sheepish though, at the question of what she had learned. "I hadn't wanted to test them outside, just in case somebody came by and thought I was doing something dangerous."

Except, of course, somebody was liable now to walk by and think she'd set a building on fire.

"Very good," Paul drawls with a golf clap. "Classic mixture.

"Alright, so you've learned to do experiments like this outside, where there's adequate ventilation, yeah yeah yeah. What about safety equipment, learned anything there?"

She couldn't help the pleased smile that appeared at the faint praise. Alexis reveled in a job well done, after all. There was a moment of fumbling before she held up a pair of safety goggles. "Keep them where I can find them before lighting the fuse."

"Have them on before lighting the fuse," Paul said a touch sharply. "You want to fumble for them blind, that's a really bad idea. Chemical splash and spatter happens, you know. I don't suppose you have any sort of eye rinse station set up in your makeshift lab?"

Have Crossed Arms and a Stern Look, although he drops it after a second.

"Smoke alarms didn't go off, did you notice?" he asks, with a smug little smile. "Does that tell you anything about them?"

She blanched a little and nodded. "Just the sink. And I haven't gotten any other chemicals besides the potassium nitrate." The 'yet' hung unspoken in the air as she frowned, considering the question.

Alexis' demeanor had slowly changed since she first waved off the smoke. She was more comfortable now, having a problem to solve. "Smoke alarms are triggered by--" she paused, realizing she didn't actually know what made smoke detectors work. Something else to look into; she scribbled that down on a scrap piece of paper before trying a different tact. "It means that this smoke isn't the same stuff as when you burn toast?" she guessed. "It sure doesn't smell like burnt food."

"Right, so, three guesses on what your next assignment is going to be and the first two don't count," Paul said crisply to the words of not having an eye rinse station yet.

He grinned a bit at her hesitation over how smoke alarms worked, held up a finger.

"Means they're probably not working, is what it means. The two primary types of smoke detector are optical, or photoelectric, and ionization-- but neither of them pay any attention to the sort of smoke. How do you think an optical smoke detector might work, hmmm?"

With a little challenging brow arch and an impress me, kid look.

The mention of a next assignment got a sigh from Alexis. It wasn't a put upon one or an irritated one, just a 'I should have known better' sigh. "Get an eyewash station," she answered as she idly chewed on her bottom lip, already thinking about how to make one work. She could probably find something that would attach to the faucet.

She was so focused on the current problem she nearly missed Mr. Smecker's next question. "Um..." Smoke detectors had not been covered in science class. Fortunately, optics had been. A little. Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall more than cursory knowledge. "Um... optical or photoelectric? That probably means it deals with the amount of light, right? So if there's too much smoke, the detector doesn't get enough light, and that triggers the alarm?"

Alexis paused. "Wait, that's not right. Then the alarm would go off every time you turned off all the lights."

"Ding, give the girl a quarter. Eyewash station before you do anything else."

He listens to her hypotheses, nodding a little. "You're very, very close, and you're right about the light-- but it doesn't have to do with the room's lighting.

"Inside your average optical smoke detector there's a little beam of light, usually a laser, positioned at a 90-degree angle to a sensor. In a smokeless situation, the light shines as normally and misses the sensor-- but the presence of smoke particles will scatter the light, and some will bounce and hit the sensor, and then you get the magical shrieking migraine machine."

Her expression brightened at the explanation, and it was probably obvious by now to Paul that Alexis was already planning on experimenting with lasers. And possibly more smoke bombs, because science really tended to be cumulative.

"Does 'before you do anything else' include replacing the smoke detector? Because that might be just as important as the eyewash station."

Sometimes, though, it seemed the Castle humor didn't fall far from the father tree.

Paul snorted at the question. "Yeah, sure-- take it off the ceiling, see if it needs batteries at least. Creating a functional optical smoke detector from scratch is a pain, but doable as long as it doesn't need to be pretty. I'm sure the library has books. You're not to screw around with ionization smoke detectors until you do have that eyewash station, though-- and supervision-- they've got radioactive material in them."

This is, yes, said with a little bit of fiendish science geek glee.

"But after I get the eyewash station?" she asked hopefully.

Paul gives Alexis a Look. "I said, after eyewash station and what else?"

Yeah, he knows all about the tricks kids pull-- pretend you didn't hear that 'supervision' bit all you want, Alexis, he's not letting you get away with that.

He got her most innocent smile. "And I asked if you'd help?"

Paul snorts in answer. "Alright, yes, I can supervise. You're not fooling anyone with that look, I just saw you gleefully blow up a room."

(That is considerable exaggeration and poetic license, Agent Smecker, when all you saw was smoke billowing out a window.)

"That was an accident!" she protested, her smile growing with his answer. "And I didn't blow up anything. I just made a lot more smoke than I expected."

"It's an accident you are grinning about," Paul said with a finger-point.

"Anyway. Eyewash station, then smoke detector when I or someone else is there to supervise. Clear?"

Kate had been sitting on her sofa when she saw smoke billowing under the apartment door. When she opened the door, she was overwhelmed by smoke. She immediately ran across the hall, praying Alexis was okay. She pounded on the door.

"Alexis! Alexis are you in there?"

Alexis had already thrown open the window, wafting smoke out of the apartment, and she winced at the sound of knocking and Kate's subsequent calls. She ran to the door and opened it, trying to school her face into some semblance of calm or at least innocence as she did so.

All she managed was mildly guilty sheepishness. "Sorry, my science project got a little," she coughed, waving a hand over her face to dispel some lingering smoke, "just a little out of hand."

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003: [visual/location: across the hall from Kate and Spencer's apartment] Where there's smoke...

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[visual] [if you want the smoke alarms to have gone off PM and I will edit!]

[visual] - nope, it's fine!

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