Yes, this probably is not-so-stealthy bragging. I don’t care. It’s mundane and pointless and I want to share it.
Last night at dinnertime, my 7-year-old daughter started asking science questions. We started with questions about the interior of the sun, and how the sun can be getting bigger even as it throws off some amount of material (punctuated by singing They Might Be Giants, which is still stuck in my head). We touched on fusion, why 3-body collisions of atoms are rare, the temperature of liquid helium, what would happen if you dropped a ball of liquid helium the size of the Earth into the sun, what if it was as big as a million Earths, photosynthesis, where fossil fuels came from and what they are used for now, evolution and the transition from water-dwelling to land-dwelling, coelacanths, and solar power. Then, after her 2-year-old brother went to bed, we opened up a bag of herb tea and examined it in her microscope and tried to identify the different ingredients.
I think I need to start studying for dinner. (Fortunately, my husband was able to handle the astrophysics questions.)
I think my 18 yr old daughter is inappropriately excited over her new TI-89. I am not sure how I feel about this. Not so long ago I could make her happy with glittery periodic table flash cards. They grow up so fast.
Dont limit yourself to astrophysics. Chinese military history, prehistoric art, philosophy, architecture, and neurochemistry are coming up next.
Does being excited about science make a kid a geek? Modern geekiness seems to be increasingly defined by trivial pop culture phenomena instead. I guess she might be a geek for liking They Might Be Giants.
My son is a history geek. He breaks out the trivial details on a regular basis and tells us the whys and wherefores of what battles accomplished what (and even moreso if tanks are involved.)
He’s interested in ancient Rome and WWII especially at the moment.
