Corked Bats and Venus

I did a science project on Venus in eighth grade, and one on coal mining in seventh grade. Since there was no coal in Florida, I asked my Uncle - who lived in Pennsylvania - to send some samples of peat, anthracite, and bituminous coal. But to get close up photos of the cloudy planet, I took instant pictures with my "swinger" camera from pictures in my brother's astronomy book, and told everyone the visit to the planet was great - because I had photos to prove I was there. Those were the days - being creative, rather than scientific, got me out of a lot of jams. And, to this day, I can tell everyone where Venus is in the night sky, but that's about all I can remember. I'm reminded of this because our grandson just took top honors, and several other awards, at his regional science fair and is moving on to national competition. He is a baseball fanatic and plays on one team or another almost all year round. His project has something to do with corked bats and a lot of statistical analysis and math was involved. That in and of itself outshines anything I could even think about! Needless to say we are very proud of him and his well rounded approach to life. We hope he does well at the next level, but even if he doesn't we still think he's something special, and the subject matter was rather creative!