Sunday, June 10, 2007

Kids Today

As we were driving back from the store the other day the boys were arguing over a stuffed animal we had just bought. "Walter", from the eloquent book "Walter, the Farting Dog," was turning into an immediate favorite, possibly because when squeezed he'd emulate the sound of passing gas. The younger brother was putting Walter through his standard musical tooting routine.

"Look, Mom," he said as Walter obediently ripped another one, "Sound is the fourth dimension."

"It is not!" his older brother argued. "Everyone knows the fourth dimension is time. Duh!"

"It doesn't have to be!" my youngest countered. "Sound can be fourth. Time can be fifth."

"That's ridiculous - how can sound come before time?" Einstein was giving Walter indigestion, and I was having trouble merging onto the freeway while following the laws of physics as argued by an 8 and 10-year-old.

My youngest settled the argument by declaring that sound was the "fArth" dimension. Walter whistled his agreement, and the older brother thought that was amusing enough to end the dispute peacefully.

The next day they nearly came to blows. The younger one was reciting Pi, and the older one argued that he should 'round off' Pi when he was done.

"You're never done with Pi," said the younger brother. "It goes on forever."

"You stopped at 3.1415," argued the older one. "The next number is 9, so you should have said 3.1416."

"I didn't stop - you interrupted me."

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

...sigh.....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

good thing older did interrupt younger, since the decimals do go on forever...

i think on one of those annoying 'apple vs. pc.' commercials , when 'apple' is introducing his 'genius' human friend (who knows such arcane facts as '64 squared is 4096', puh-lease , i knew that when i was twelve!)in the first version i.b.m asks her what pi is to 4 places, she 'truncates' the decimal to 3.1415, but in the later version she 'rounds' to 3.1416.

and here is a link so you can search for your name among the binary digits of pi pi search -insomniac

Mad Scientist said...

It is good to have geeks for friends! I will show Weasel the Pi name search site. He will love it.

Anonymous said...

Funny how kids can be so immature (farting) and so scientific/mathematic (pi) at the same time. Sound like smart boys; I don't remember ever having arguments with my siblings about pi.

Kristina L.