My experiments with “pyramid power” in the 70s and early 80s were seriously mind-blowing. I don’t know how, to this day, to explain how an open, pyramid-shaped frame (built to the precise angles of the Great Pyramid in Egypt) kept bits of food (bacon, an orange slice, a glass of milk, among others) from putrefying, while the same food — placed a few inches away outside of the pyramid — completely molded and rotted.

I documented my experiments in a 7th-grade science fair project titled “Do Pyramids Affect Decomposition?” After winning my junior high school fair, I took the project to the Maryland State Science Fair. I’ll never forget the back-and-forth as several perplexed organizers tried to put my project in the appropriate section — was it biology? Physics? Chemistry? I can’t remember where the eventually stuck me, but I’m proud to say I’ve stayed in that weird little ghetto of the scientifically unclassifiable ever since.

Click for the PDF of a vintage pyramid power pamphlet.

Here’s the honor award for Outstanding Accomplishment.