This morning I donned my wizard's hat and Annie I set off to school with a bag full of various objects to discuss gravity with her class. Granted, about a third of the class had seen this before in kindergarten and first grade, but they still started off saying that the heavier objects would fall faster. We had a blast while we were all dropping things and watching to see what happened. My bag of goodies included a wide range of objects from the house, and Annie was practically glowing that I was there in her class.

The kids would hypothesize regarding what would happen each time I had a set of students up to drop items. We talked initially about Galileo and what he did at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I even had one kid that had been there! We finally agreed that everything fell at the same rate, and then I brought out the feather. They were already thinking of air resistance, and knew what was going to happen, although one girl said that she knew what would happen because she remembered when we did this in kindergarten and first grade. After that we started talking, and five minutes into that I started to lose some of them. Dropping stuff was cool, but discussing it was boring. It was ok, I still had most of them and we talked about the planets, the tides, the atmosphere, the moon and where it came from, and kept reinforcing the fact that all things fall at the same rate.

I even threw some equations on the board, some of which were way over their head. I know most people would tell me that was stupid, but I am still hoping I am not unique, and that there is some student who will look at this and say, "I don't get it, but I want to."

Next, at the teacher's request, I am going to teach them chess. Those who have played chess with me will think this is a travesty, but I know the rules and movements of chess, so I think I am qualified to teach them the game well enough that they can get started...

Never let them stop asking 'why,' and never answer with 'because that's the way it is.' - David Hockanson