Kid Physics 101

 

 

One of the brightest sides of parenthood is seeing kids try to understand the world around them. They can come up with wierd and wonderful theories about how things work or came to be … sort of like the Theory of Evolution and Michael Crichton’s theory of time travel based on alternate universes (although he never explains how the message written in the 14th Century alternate universe makes it to the the 20th Century alternate universe … see Timeline)

Here’s my two favourites from my own kids:

Elder Son: (4 years old, pointing to power cord that runs from the digital clock by my bed) “Dad I know what that pipe’s for. It puts the time into the clock.”

Younger Son: (6 years old, having fallen asleep for twenty minutees of a car trip, stirs and wakes up) “Dad! You should thank me. I just made the trip go quicker!”

B is for Blokes

Bail: To leave or abandon a situation especially when it gets difficult.

Barby or Barbie: Not the doll of the same name, but a short-hand for “barbeque”. This only gets confusing when you ask your (Australian) daughter to put some burgers on the barbie.

Bloke: A male person; a guy. When used of children, one must say “little bloke” and when used of teenage boys, one must say “young bloke”. For the rest of us men, it’s just bloke …

Bogan: Uncouth, unstylish individual of either gender. Bogans might be seen visiting the local shopping Mall wearing their signature blend of flannelette shirt, cheap sheepskin moccasin slippers and tracksuit pants (or black jeans). They usually talk rough and have little ambition beyond winning the lottery and males and females may also sport a mullet haircut. It is my fervent wish that my children do not grow up to be Bogans… or even boganesque!

[picture above] One of the Bogan’s many incarnations!

And most importantly…

Bum: a bottom, butt, backside.

BumBum: Gas, fart, bottom-burp.

I just had to link to this one…

Thanks to Markk for this one (that’s right thrillseekers – Mark with 2 k’s!). Sure it’s lowering the tone of this family blog to direct you to this link, but what the hey! It will make every other post I present look classy by comparison.

This is one of those products that it’s hard to believe is real. You’ve heard of earcandling? Well, wait – there’s more! Please go and learn about the ButtCandle  … and make sure you browse the FAQs.

Fortunately, no pictures.

I am the Anti-Santa

 

In case there are any lingering doubts that there is no Santa Claus, please consider the following scientific arguments…

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn’t appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total – 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. For the sake of our ensuing calculations, we will assume that there is at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1.2 milliseconds to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 71.6 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours.

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at appx 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a mere 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run 15 miles per hour, unless being chased by a pack of wolves.

4. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison-this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the boat, not the person).

5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – thus heating the chain in almost the same fashion as spacecraft re – -entering the earth’s atmosphere. As a result of this friction, the lead pair of reindeer will absorb around 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporised within 4.26 milliseconds. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion – If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

A is for Aussie…

Ok, an admission: I’m Australian. And proud of it. This means that in a global medium like a blog, if I write like I speak, I’m prone to drop in Aussie idioms that mean nothing (& sound wierd) to blokes (men) from other countries.

So let’s slowly work our way through the Australian language a letter at a time. Then you’ll have something to refer to when decoding my stories…

A is for -

• Aussie: pronounced Ozzie (as in Osbourne) not Ossie as I often hear it pronounced in the USA. As I’ll show you at the other end of the alphabet, we Aussies love the “z” sound and put it in as many words as possible (e.g. mozzies rather than mosquitos). To be Aussie, you have to speak a form of English, shun class-consciousness, believe in egalitarianism, drop the “r” at the end of any word (replacing it with “ah”), use the word ”mate” for people you like and dislike, AND eat Vegemite and like it! 
• Ankle-biter: small child. I’m not sure if this is exclusively Australian but we use it a lot anyway.

Any Aussies out there feel free to contribute a couple more that are terms Australian Dads are likely to use.

 

Constipated? Try this.

Son X (he doesn’t want me to disclose his name) was 3 years old. He’d been sitting on the toilet for some time. I wandered past to see if everything was … well … moving along ok.

The conversation ran as follows:

“Dad! Bang me on the head!”

“What?!”

“Bang me on the head!” (He slaps himself flathanded on the top of his head. “Like that.”

“I’m not going to bang you on the head, son.”

“Yes, Dad. Bang me on the head. Like that!” (Again with the self-head-slapping – whack!)

“Son, I’m not going to hit you on the head. Why do you want me to hit you on the head?”

“To make the poo come out. Just like the sauce (ketchup) bottle”

 

In the Beginning

So my wife (Ninja) was uncharacteristically moody and emotional this one day. Nothing I could do would snap her out of it – and being a male, I considered it my duty to “fix” the “problem”. [Mainly because it was freakin' ME out]

One of us (I don’t remember who) quipped “Maybe you’re (I’m) pregnant“…

…Funny joke. It turned out to be true.

I remember distinctly the tropical storm of emotions and thoughts in me in the weeks which followed that discovery.

Emotions: overwhelming happiness / breath-depleting anxiety / helplessness in the face of the New and Unknown.

Thoughts: “Alright! I’m going to be a DAD!” / “What the hell do I know about fathering??” / “Where’s the $$ going to come from??” / ”Is that hair growing in my ear!?” / “Alright! I’m going to be a DAD!” / “So is there like a Dad Course or a book or something I can read to get this right?” / “Just wing it! You’ll be fine.” / “Man, I’m not ready for this!” / “It’s ok, I got a few months to prepare and study up on this” / “… Alright! I’m going to be a DAD!”

As you can see, in the beginning, my eldest son’s co-creator was anything but godlike!