01x02 - Puppet Power

[bunniefuu]

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ We need you

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ When I need help, and I've got a question ♪

♪ there's a place I go for inspiration ♪

♪ Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation ♪

♪ What girls?

♪ SciGirls!

Whoo!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ I need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ You've gotta log on, post,

♪ upload, pitch in! Yeah!

♪ Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating? ♪

♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting, ♪

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ SciGirls!!

Hola! I'm Izzie,

and I'm running for class president.

[Jake laughs]

Have you seen this mashup

of skateboard wipeouts and rapping grandpas?

Hilarious!

Jake, eyes here, ah... focus!

You're supposed to be helping me

with my video campaign.

Right, totally-- I'm listenin'.

[laughs] Oh, that's gotta hurt!

[disgruntled] Jake!

Okay, I'm gonna close that window now.

Okay, I was saying

I, oh, hang on.

I need a little tech help.

That's better.

Now, vote for me, and I promise

to take the mystery out of mystery meat

and lobby to change our mascot

from the Bakersfield Bigmouth Basses...

yeah, to pretty much anything else.

[click!] [crowd cheers] Ha-ha! Thank you!

So, what do you think? And be honest.

It's great! I just don't think it matters.

Why not?

Ah, everyone knows, in elections

the tallest candidate always wins.

Tallest? That's not fair.

Yeah I know, and you're...

Oh..oh...

[gasps] Oh, adios, Jake.

Must get taller, and fast, but how?

SciGirls, I need you!

♪ ♪

Hm, I don't think so.

Ah, nope.

Nope, not that one either.

Hey, hello SciGirls, let's see if we can

figure out a way for me to win.

♪ ♪

The May Day parade is a celebration of spring.

It happens every single year,

and they make gigantic puppets every year.

[crowd cheers]

It kinda helps you just

feel connected with everybody.

The best thing about May Day would be

people design big puppets.

The of us have been

in the May Day parade

every year of our whole lives. We are all best friends.

We're like sisters; we call each other.

This year we wanted to do a huge group puppet together.

We've worn masks; we've worn costumes.

For the past few years we've been on stilts.

We're going to make a way more complicated puppet

that's gonna have really cool moving parts.

And we want it to be like, really big and exciting

and people are like oh, I remember that,

when they're like, years old.

♪ ♪

Today is when everybody sort of gathers and learns the story

and starts designing their puppets.

[woman] All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is our first workshop

of the th May Day Parade and Ceremony.

[loud cheers & applause]

Today we're going to be mainly

picking the section that we want to be in,

whether it's going to be like, a pig or a spider or a plant.

Do you guys want to be in this section?

[SciGirls] We're here to find out about this section.

We have some questions about this section.

[Izzie] "Section, section"-- yeah, where's the tall section?

What are you guys going to build?

Ah, well, we don't know.

Hi! Hey you guys.

Bow is an engineer/puppeteer

who works at Heart of the Beast,

and he's very cool and stuff.

So you're here for May Day. All right!

Bow is helping us with making the puppet.

You've been looking around the theater, looking at different stuff?

And you're gonna continue around and you want to look

at all the ones? Okay.Cool. Bye.

We would like to get some nose dots please.

Oh awesome, what color would you like?

[SciGirls] It's a tradition that we get

dots of paint on our nose 'cause it's fun.

This one was interesting, they're kind of all individual.

If we're all just in this separate,

we aren't really making a puppet together.

There was a bunch of options, but they were sort of small,

like just a mask or something,

and we wanted to do something together.

I sort of think we should do a pig,

and we could engineer it to move.

Do you guys remember that bear last year?

You know how it blinked its eyes? Yes.

I think we should have our pig blink his eyes.

Maybe we could somehow get sound effects.

It'd be cool if we could have the pig have a baby.

We do a birth pig?

I don't know.

That'd be kind of interesting.

So big enough that we could sit in it and...

Or there could be people in it

and people walking by the side.

This year we decided to make a pig puppet.

Okay, I think we should talk to Bow.

So I want to show you this puppet warehouse.

This is where we keep all the puppets. Here it is!

[SciGirls] Oh, that's cool. Wow!

Look it!

They're just puppets.

Whoa.

[Bow] Take a look at some of the things,

like, if you like the shape or the size.

You're going to be in the middle of the street,

and people are going to be far away,

so you want to have something that's kind of big.

This should be big enough.I like that size.

How could we get something that big to move though?

We could use poles, like bamboo or something.

Oh yeah, or maybe wheels.

I'm going to show you something that might

help you with this, it's called a backpack puppet.

As you see, it's a real simple frame,

and this is the backpack,

and then you build the puppet up over like this,

so you can be a giant, giant puppet.

Whoa, a giant, giant puppet?

Yeah, just what the candidate ordered!

Another neat way of making your puppet come to life,

and it's something that could come out of it,

into the audience--chipmunk! [Bow smacks his lips]

[SciGirls] Whoa!

Oh weird. What is it?

Yeah, what is it?

[pssst!] Eaah.

Ha-ha! That's cool.

So that's another little surprise you could put in.

Wow, I love this glossy thing.

Isn't it an amazing place?

[Izzie] Here's something about Anna.

Hi, I'm Anna.

I am here today on location,

and here's my nostrils!

This is my dog Buster.

He loves to lick things.

And this is my Mom.Hi, Anna.

I like to fence and dress up in pioneer clothing.

I love my dolls. I also love to make dolls.

This is my sewing room.

I just finished my doll.

[SciGirls] So what should our pig look like?

Well, it has to be big enough to have the backpacks in it.

The person in the front of the pig can control the head.

The head should maybe be paper-mache.

Bad thing is, it would be hard for them

to turn around and control the tail.

Maybe there should be cardboard strips.

Let's sketch out some of our ideas.

Here's like, the cardboard strips.

So here's like, one leg.

Then here could be the face.

Smoke would come out here.

I think we should get in touch with Bow.

♪ ♪

Whoa!

He came over in this like, bicycle puppet.

Hi. Hi Bow.

I wanted to show you a bike puppet.

Do you want to try

getting on this thing? [girls laugh]

It's all done just strictly off the pedals.

So what I do is I take rope from the pedals to some pulleys.

When you pedal, you pull on a rope,

which goes to the pulley and lifts the wings up.

He used a series of pulleys

so every time he pedaled he didn't have to do anything,

and then the arms would flap up and down.

So I just wanted to show you another idea

to do rolling puppets. Let's go inside.

We've got a really good idea of what we want to be doing now.

What I want you to do is meet a friend of mine.

AnnMarie is a mechanical engineer just like me

and I think she's going to be a wonderful part of our team.

AnnMarie works at the University

of St. Thomas, engineering,

so she's also helping us.

Welcome to our design lab!

This is our pig design that we have so far.

Are these you guys standing inside of it?

[SciGirls] Yeah, these are us. [AnnMarie] What's it do?

Its eyelids go blink.

How about this tail, does it spin?

Smoke comes out of its nose and its ears.

Through the whole parade, which is miles long.

Okay, so really light with lots of moving parts

but still really sturdy. [SciGirl] Yes.

Why don't we go build some models?

We call them prototypes, the little models

that obviously won't be anywhere near as big.

Let's build a little one and see if we can figure out how the mechanisms work.

Norah was taking a quick vacation

like, left us during the birth of the pig!

I have some incredibly serious engineering stuff!

This one would be good.

You think the bowl is an eyelid?

Like that maybe?

Usually we want to work small so we don't waste as much material.

We build a little one, if we like how it works, then we scale it up.

So you're thinking holes through it?

[Izzie] Yes, that's what a prototype is.

[AnnMarie] How are we going to get it to move?

I think we should attach a string,

or make a hole right here so we can tie a string here

so we can pull it back.

I think we should tape a stick right here

then we can just like, do that really easily.

Maybe we could just like, draw it on the board.

Like this...

open, close.

[laughs] It would just like, sort of go around the bar.

You might not even need to make the loop all the way around it.

Even if that string just came down and under, that would work.

Oh yeah, I didn't think about that.

Two sticks and it closes both at the same time.

Are you thinking sticks or strings?Maybe we should try both.

[buzzing]

This is a really good idea.

Would it help if you put the bottom string over?

Yeah.Oh that is pretty cool.

You guys, I finished this one.

You can show me first.

So this would be held in by the peg.

That's cool. Let's see yours, Laci.

This helps like a pulley

and it makes it open and close really easily.

Wow, that's really cool!

For Laci's design we would need .

This one you could go like this, and then you could also

be squeezing a bellow to make smoke come out.

Laci's idea was really good, but you would need hands

to do the bellows and the eyes at the same time,

and we don't really have hands.

Usually humans have hands.

I think we should take a vote.

So raise your hand if you want this one.

Sometimes when someone has an idea

and someone else has an idea,

then we're sort of like ah, I really want my idea.

Oh!

It was hard for Laci because she loved her prototype.

I like Laci's prototype too, but I don't think it would have

been very good for our design.

Maybe it would be good for something

that was like a Cyclops or something?

[Izzie] Now it's time for Laci.

I'm Laci.

Oh darn it!

This is my Mom.

This is my Dad. [Dad] Hi Lace.

I have a cat named Rudy.

He loves staring at cameras.

This is called the untwist.

We're making cakes.

We'll get you when the cakes are done.

I like to collect agates.

I like to play the piano a lot.

Okay, I need to go to school now.

Okay, so we found a lot

of cool stuff at the store.

We went out shopping and we bought some materials

that we're going to use for our puppet,

and Bow came by the workshop to help us get started.

So when I start a big puppet or some kind of float,

what I typically do is, I build from the inside out.

We want to see how tall you are, how tall you want the pig to be,

and then we can figure out

how big of a structure we need to put in there.

[SciGirl] inches.

The best way to do it is to start with the backpacks,

then we're going to attach both backpacks.

Let's get to it!

We need to figure out a way to attach these.

We could use rubber ties.That's a great idea!

We cut up some rubber ties out of bicycle tires

and we're going to use them

to tie together the frame of the puppet.

[Bow] Pull this tight, and it's always good

to wrap it around like this a bunch of times.

I think I'm getting

the hang of this.

Whoa!

Ha!

Tie them on.

Ready! Now what?

Clapping for Clarasophia.

Tah-dah! I'm Clarasophia.

Whoo, I'm so fabulous!

My favorite thing to do as you can see, is trapeze.

I do low casting and triple trapeze.

I really like to read. Here's my bed.

I love stuffed animals and animals.

The reason my rabbit has this leg brace on,

'cause I want to be a veterinarian when I grow up.

I love robotics, electronics.

I also have my own computer, and yeah!

Norah, this is what we built when you weren't here.

So it actually goes this way.

[Bow] Yup, let's go build.

What we generally do when we do an engineering project is,

we make a drawing first.

So what we want to do is make a scale.

A -inch pig equals a . puppet.

This is what we do in engineering is,

we make scale drawings like this

so we can kind of figure out how big things are,

and these are usually called blueprints.

Imagine if you're an architect

and you had to do all your drawings to actual scale!

You wouldn't be able to fit your drawing in the building.

So now what we want to do is

put these cross braces onto the backpack.

[SciGirls] Oh my gosh, this is so exciting!

Two people will be inside the pig's skeleton

carrying the pig on their backs like they would a backpack.

[Bow] I'm gonna lash these on really tight,

as tight as we can. Pull it tight.

What we're going to do is just a little test

and we're going to kind of wiggle it back and forth.

The rubber ties will give the pig flexibility.

If it was rigidly attached, what would happen if Bow rocked it that way?

It would fall apart.

It would have to raise up, right? Because these would be at -degree angles to each other,

but look at how the angle changes as it rocks.

Wow, that's really cool.

The plan is, we should,

today we're going to make the ribs.

Then finish the frame.Yeah.

♪ ♪

It's kinda flimsy. It's going to be like this.

I know, this wire is sort of bad though.

If we put cardboard on it maybe.

I think we're going to need cardboard.

Cardboard is gonna be used for the ribs of the pig

because we found the wire was too flimsy.

So we can staple the wire onto the cardboard,

so then it will be more secure.

Oh my gosh, look, that does stay bent pretty well.

This is sort of not working.

Well, you can unroll it.

We'll be using this to put

over the body of the pig to hold the fabric.

Hi guys. [SciGirls] Oh hey. This is my daughter Sage.

She thought she'd come and see your puppet.

Is this the first test of the chicken wire?

Maybe we should also try to actually put it on or something?

I love the cross braces you put between the vertical posts.

I found some cloth that's...

Oh that's good 'cause it's clear.

Yeah, it's kind of light.

I don't know how see-through we want it,

but it's a little see-through.

♪ ♪

Whoa! So did you guys just build this?

I was walking around my house,

and I found a metal hoop

that I thought would be really good for the head.

We put it in the middle of the head and then had

cardboard strips and bamboo rings coming off of it,

and then we paper-mached over all of that.

What should we use for the eyes and the eyelids?

Oh, I just got a good idea.

I think this idea would be kind of good.

Oh yeah.Oh yeah!

Okay, so maybe we could split up into teams

'cause then it'll be easier.

There was too much work to be done,

so we just split up into groups,

and Anna and Clarasophia did the eyes,

and I kind of wanted to do the bellows because I kind of knew

what we were going to do for the bellows.

[all cheer]

♪ ♪

Clarasophia and I started on the eyes.

We sort of built off the prototype in AnnMarie's lab.

We used Styrofoam balls for the eyes,

and then we used strainers for the eyelids,

and we had one big dowel running through like an axle.

♪ ♪

So we designed a hinge to connect the handle to the eyes,

or the dowel, so we could move it up and down.

Okay, so we finished the eyes.

We made this stick and it goes up and bends.

What's with the duct tape on the bottom and the tube?

Originally we put it there so that this could bend from this

and not just be like, static.

We made this little loop around it, and so it actually can

spin around it so it can move really easy.

Good job on the eyes!

We still have to finish the bellows.

Now we're going to start on the nose.

We are going to have our pig blow smoke out of its nose

and ears just like the contraption that Bow showed us

in the puppet storage room.

We're using fireplace bellows,

talcum powder, tubing, and connectors.

To make the smoke come out of the nose and the ears,

we have to split the tubing ways.

Blast off. Ooh, dear.

Only hardly a little bit comes out here.

There's not enough pressure

to make it come out of both the ears and the nose.

Maybe we should just have it go through the nose.

We can't have smoke coming out of the ears.

We're just going to have it come out of the nose in one big POOF!

that the audience can see instead of little just

teeny little dribbles that are just...

If we focus on just the nose, the pressure from the bellows

only has one path to follow, straight ahead.

♪ ♪

, , ...

[psssst!] [all] Aaah!

♪ ♪

Hey everybody!Oh, hey Bow!

Look at the pig-- it's gorgeous!

Let me see, who's in there.

Hey, Anna hey Laci, how ya doin'?

Good. Hey Bow.

Wow, look at this! This is just amazing!

Show me what you've done.

Gorgeous. Wow, look at that!

And it's pretty easy to do?

Yeah.All right!

Oh, I so want a pair of those!

I cut off these cardboard ribs,

and I replaced them with these black plastic ones.

The cardboard ribs just sort of like hung down.

Then I saw the big ring of black tubing, and I thought

well, maybe that would work, and now the pig's really fat.

[Bow] This is just a bunch of fabric you've torn into strips, right?

Yup. So here's the tail.

There's a dowel and then there's a piece of wood;

whenever the dowel spins, the wood spins.

Then there's a crank at the bottom and there's

another dowel going through it with tape connected to it

so it can't go through there.

And then there's a washer on each side.

And you can turn it around and it will go around.

Oh, I love it!

I'm proud of you guys. You did great!

Okay, now just keep on going straight like that, don't...

[a playful scream] Okay, Norah, just try to go forward.

Poor guys. You guys might want

to turn around so you can walk forward.

I gotcha, I gotcha.

I definitely hope it's not windy.

More fabric and more padding.

I feel claustrophobic in the front.

Excuse me. Why are you backing up?

I don't know! I'm not! I'm trying to get out!

I told you it's not easy!

Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa!

[Izzie] A dancing pig? I thought you said a blinking pig.

♪ ♪

Yeah, you need some more skin.

Oh yeah, we do need more skin.

♪ ♪

[Bow] That's perfect.

[Izzie] Oh good, and here's Norah.

My name is Norah.

No, I do not iron my clothes!

I was born in China.

This is my bunny; his name is Sebastian.

He's not very social.

I really love sports like tennis,

track and field, and dance.

I'm getting ready for a recital.

♪ ♪

When I was younger I had a chance to go back to Shanghai.

They have a lot of really tall buildings,

and that's why I want to be an architect when I grow up.

How 'bout we finish this later?

♪ ♪

So it's the morning of May Day

and people are finishing up their puppets,

and they're getting ready for the parade.

♪ ♪

Good job! Whoo-hoo!

Puff, the magic pig!

[a marching band plays]

We're at the beginning of the May Day Parade,

and we're really excited.

Our moms are gonna walk with us.

The weird one that's dancing is my mom!

So we have to go get in the pig.

Okay, bye!

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

We started the parade and things were going really great.

Then all of a sudden...

Bellows, Norah. I am.

They're not working.

It's because we didn't fill them up.

Anna, you said they were full.They were full.

Somebody forgot to fill the bellows.

I don't know how it happened.

I think I filled them,

but I don't know, something happened.

We're stopping? I can't see.

What was that? Anna!

Where's the bellows?

I'm filling them up right now.

Don't move it!

I can't do this alone.

Okay, I'm almost done. Don't worry.

We're trying.

Okay, we're good!

I want to just get outside.

♪ ♪

[Izzie laughing] I love your pig!

And not just a pig; a blinking, dancing, tall pig.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Oh, my gosh! Look!

♪ ♪

I did it! I made a puppet!

Oh, thanks SciGirls.

Oh, Wait for me!

That was so great.

It was really fun being in the parade and everything.

People were like, dancing around the pig.

It was fun because we worked so hard on it,

and people liked it a lot.

It's probably going to be an experience

we're always going to share, and I'm really proud of it.

I'm glad that we all pitched together and made the pig

'cause it was a lot of fun.

We did it! Ya-hoo!

We should upload our photos.

Yeah, to the Website.

Okay, put your hand in the middle.

Whoo!

♪ ♪

Oh.. oh!

[clears her throat]

Fellow classmates, being class president

is a tall order, but

if you vote for me I promise

to be head and shoulders above

the rest of the candidates.

Thank you.

[applause] Oh...whoa!

[applause & laughter]

Oh, Jake!

Jake, okay, how many times you gonna watch this?

Hey, I'm the least of your problems.

This thing is going viral.

You may have lost the election, but you've won ,--

[electronic beep] no, no, wait, fans!

Wait, no, , , .

Okay, okay, next time I'm going for the prototype!