Just because...

[ajva]

The "why" phase: to be avoided if your Dad is a Chemistry professor.

Comments

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO ME WHEN I HAD THAT PHASE.

I love my dad.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Heh. When I was that age, my dad spent months with me in the laundrette each week explaining ALL about atomic structures and bonding. I even got a molecule-building set for Christmas (although my dad rarely let me at it...)

Stood me in very good stead for A-level!

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

My mum lied, invariably.

I remember distinctly when the private school she worked for moved her off of geography and into science on the basis that all she had to do was teach out of the textbook, so what was the worst that could happen. She came home one day and asked me, "Why is the sky red around the sun at sunset then, come on - you know everything."

I was 14 and love the Usborne books, and so could explain about the thickness of the atmosphere we view the sun through when it's overhead versus the thickness when we look at the horizon, and about water molecules scattering light, and how the classic experiment to demonstrate it involved milk and torches.

She listened baffled and I could tell she'd tuned out, and so I asked her, "Why?"

She laughed; "Oh, some kid in class asked me, so I just made some stuff up, he'll never know!"

She taught me in her way, I think it's safe to say. (c:

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

I was never bought my own molecule set, but dad has *loads* of them and I used to play with them all the time. He owns two proper microscopes, too, and we used to look at all sorts of things under them. My science teacher at secondary school was really, really confused when he tried to demonstrate the iodine/starch test and I said "oh, I've done that already!"

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just wow.

My parents were very good about this stuff - we had encyclopedias and dictionaries in the house for as long as I can remember (including a wonderful set of illustrated encyclopedias published in around the 1950s with lots of those glossy, slightly blurred technicolour illustrations you got then), and the 'Ask Me Why' books too. So the response to a question my parents couldn't answer was always, "I don't know - let's look it up!"

I had experience at school of teachers who would refuse to admit they didn't know the answer to something, though, and would either talk around it, give a madeup answer, or tell a child off for asking a 'stupid question'.

[sanjibabes.livejournal.com]

(giggles)

[alan1957.livejournal.com]

I like the very last line (in the writer's biog): His favourite element is the element of surprise.

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Oh brilliant.

...ETA: I always try to answer Saul (now just 8) fully and honestly when he asks me stuff - but I don't have quite that level of expertise (not at (physical) chemistry, anyway.)

[jhg.livejournal.com]

God I hated it when teachers did that - because very often I did find out, albeit sometimes years later.

GAH!