Inertia
December 7, 2010 by Julia
Filed under kid projects and DIY
A couple of days ago, my kid would not stop asking me why the word stop has the letter “p” in it, and he totally meant it in that existential sort of way. I mean, really? How am I supposed to answer that with any degree of satisfaction? My two year old is deep in the “why, why, why” phase. He asks so many questions, especially the same ones over and over, that sometimes Mama has to resort to nerdy science demos to stop the “why” questions when they turn into a broken record. The shock and awe approach works great most of the time.
“Come with me, Stinker. Grab a cup. Fill it with water please.” The little booger knew something was up, but the why questions continued. ”Why am I getting a cup, Mama? Why do I need to fill it with water? What are you doing , Mama?” I rummaged through the fridge for an egg. Then I asked the little guy to bring me one of many toilet paper rolls that he keeps in a stash as his bee-locoolers and a cake pan. At this point, he was too curious to ask any more questions.
An object that is in motion, stays in motion. An object that is at rest, stays at rest. Pretty basic physics concepts, right?
1. Fill cup with water.
2. Place cake pan on top of cup.
3. Place toilet paper roll on top of cake pan, directly over the center of the cup.
4. Place raw egg on top of the toilet paper roll.
5. Let the kid smack the cake pan out of the way.
6. Shock. And. Awe.
I asked hubby to smack the cake pan for me while I held the video cam. This is much more impressive live.
Inertia from Little Austinite on Vimeo.
This quick set-up halted the infinite loop of why questions about the word stop. Awesome. I helped him set this trick up several times before new questions started back up. ”Why did the egg fall into the cup? Why didn’t the egg fly up to the sky? Why, Mama? Why didn’t the egg break?” At least these questions I can answer. 
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So. Awesome.
Not only because of the nifty experiment, but that you showed it to your little kid.
Too many parents think science is too high-brow for toddlers and infants. It’s not. Their little minds are ripe for this sort of thing. And even if they don’t get all of it (neurologically they just can’t get some things until certain ages), supplying your kid with plenty of science demos *will* make some stuff stick, and more importantly it teaches them that science is COOL.
Bravo, bravo, bravo. And I’m going to do this with my five year old (for whom I knitted a DNA model when she was in-utero, and at the age of four stunned a pile of adults at the Natural History Museum on UT’s campus when we went to the top floor and she cried out, “That’s the biggest DNA I’ve ever seen!” Yup…some stuff sticks!).
If only I knew how to knit, I would likely have done the same thing! I do plan to show my 5 year old daughter how to extract DNA from her cheek cells soon enough as she has been asking about genetic inheritance (not in those words, of course).