Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, did you learn any more science today?
Younger offspring: Yes! More dinosaur stuff.
Dr. Free-Ride: What kinds of dinosaur stuff?
Younger offspring: Stuff about dinosaurs with sharp, pointy teeth.
Dr. Free-Ride: Is there another song?
Younger offspring: Yeah, but I’m not ready to teach it to you yet.
Dr. Free-Ride: So, which dinosaurs had the sharp, pointy teeth?
Younger offspring: All of them!
Dr. Free-Ride: Really?
Younger offspring: Not exactly. But Tyranosaurus rex and pteradactyls did.
Elder offspring: We studied teeth from different animals in science. The sharp and pointy ones are good for carnivores.
Younger offspring: Good for biting other dinosaurs.
Elder offspring: Or for spearing fish. Plant-eaters have flatter teeth that are good for breaking or grinding seeds or other plant matter.
Dr. Free-Ride: Interesting that humans have both kinds.
Younger offspring: (Popping a pinky-finger in mouth and pretending to chomp down on it) Yum! Tasty!
Dr. Free-Ride: Don’t bite too hard! You won’t grow a new pinky.
Younger offspring: I can’t bite too hard.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, I wonder if you can’t bite too hard for the same reason you can’t really tickle yourself …
Younger offspring: Huh?
Dr. Free-Ride: Feedback. If you try to tickle yourself, if it gets really tickly you kind of slow down with the tickling.
Elder offspring: And you can’t really bite your finger too hard because when it starts to hurt, you stop biting yourself.
Dr. Free-Ride: Exactly. But I bet I could bite your finger too hard. Let me try!
Younger offspring: No! Your tongue is too long!
Dr. Free-Ride: Huh?
Younger offspring: You’ll lick your eye, and then when you bite me you’ll get your pink eye germs on me.
Dr. Free-Ride: I will not lick my eye. Ew! I’m not a — whatever lizardy animal that is that licks its own eye.
Elder offspring: Geckos. They lick their eyes because they don’t have regular eyelids to keep stuff out of them.
Dr. Free-Ride: Cool. But still, ew!
This makes me feel better about the coming generations. (And supports my theory that teaching kids science is mostly a matter of transmitting the right slightly gross factoids, in the proper scientific context of course.)
Owl Pellets! This what I remember best about actual science from my kid’s elmentary school. Sadly, the oldest 2 both got to “disect” and count mouse bones in the feces, but becasue of dollar cutbacks, the youngest was denied the fun of really digging in to the subject.
Friday trivia,
Didn’t know that about geckos either.
According to Merriam-Webster a factoid is:
1 : an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print
2 : a brief and usually trivial news item
So I hope we aren’t teaching our kids too many factoids…facts will do however
Happy Friday!
Actually it’s entirely possible to bite off one’s own finger…one just needs the right amount of force in the right spot. If done fast enough you feel very little pain at all since by the time the pain ought to kick in the endorphins are already there.
I debated posting this. The mood is not sprog-bloggy.
The finger can go in the emotionally disturbed. I worked in a residential center for 6-13-year-olds. A 6-year-old was admitted who chewed off a fingertip. A surgeon obviously cleaned it up, but above the joint was gone. The kid actually did it in a hopsital, and so was brought to the state’s attention.
Most of the time these kids were just kids. Their parents were real pieces of work, however. You parents and kids may now count your blessings.
It is true that in the discussion presented here, we merely identified the concept of a feedback, but did not look at ways that it could be subverted. I’m thinking building a Rube Goldberg machine might afford happier opportunities for that.
As well, we didn’t really talk about the physics/engineering angle of biting one’s finger off or not. Again, I think I’m most comfortable looking at these ideas by building a machine.
Do you suppose kids who build Rube Goldberg machines have better outlets for their frustrations? Or do they just have sillier parents?
If you want to keep them really busy, defy them to build a perpetual motion machine, ala “Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm
Aw man, not you too! I have one student who obsessively looks up words on Merriam-Webster and tries to use them in class discussion, in total defiance of semantic evolution, connotation, or polysemy. The dictionary only gets you so far.
That said, I really didn’t know that factoids are supposed to be false. I guess I meant something more like “factling” or “factette.” The small, weird truths seem to anchor the big ones.
Blogger and readers are light years distance from said parents.
Reality-loving, in-wonderment-of-nature, Rube-Goldberg-building, sprog-blogging, especially silly, even eye-licking parents are the best kind to have. Years hence the off-spring will actually realize that. If you’re lucky, they’ll even tell you.
P.S. My 8-year-old niece has become a regular sprog blog listener and I the reader. You’re teaching science beyond your offspring.
I’ve heard “factoid” defined less formally, as “information so divorced from its original context as to have lost all meaning”. (Or at least authenticity!)
Delightful reading this converation that took place with the children. I just love reading these type of conversations!