In 10th grade I decided to enter the annual Science Fair.  Being a total science nut (the term “nerd” had not been in use yet) it's surprising I hadn't done so before.  I remember agonizing of what to do for some time.  I had read the magazine Popular Science for a few years and in the back pages they had all sorts of advertisements for science projects so I ordered a catalog of project plans you could order.  One that particularly interested me was building a laser.  Lasers had only been invented a few years earlier so what could be cooler than building a Helium-Neon laser?   I researched and got a few parts but soon found it to be much too complicated.
 
  I then read about Vortex cooling in which you could inject compressed air into a spiral creating a vortex which would cool the air.  I built a vortex chamber out of plastic and then found a old compressor which I rebuilt but the compressor didn’t put out enough air to make it work.
 
  So, I turned to my trusty Popular Science magazine where I found a book “Science Projects Handbook” for only 50¢.   In it was a project about was about a closed environment for traveling in space.  I proceeded to build a contraption out of glass, tubing and plastic container making an environment for a mouse.  The mouse was in a small plastic container with a wire bottom so his droppings would fall though down a tube which then would be pumped up to the top of a glass cylinder filled with water and algae.  In theory the mouse feed the algae with it's droppings and the air from the mouse circulated though the algae to clean the CO2 and producing oxygen. I had it all set up, the people and judges came.  The next day the awards would be made so I left the mouse in the contraption overnight and went home.  The next day and I arrive and found someone had cracked open the lid of the mouse container and the poor mouse was soaking wet and looked miserable.   I got an Honorable Mention award.