J, K and to a lesser extent L and sometimes I have chats in the bathroom while I’m trying to get them to bed. These are often delaying tactics, but often I can’t help myself and the tiles get a bit more crayon scribbled on them. K is starting to ask interesting questions, in that they lead to interesting chats.
Earlier this week he asked “What’s energy?” J was around too, and we got talking about some examples like heat, sound, movement, potential, and how it’s converted rather than created or destroyed. So he said “So it’s just moving atoms then” to which I said “Not really. What about light – it goes through space and there are no atoms there?” And I reminded them how weird light was – they could each have a torch and cross the beams (hope they don’t work for Ghostbusters in the future 😉 and the beams would both be at the point where they cross, but then separate again afterwards. If they swapped their torches for balls and threw them along the same paths as before, the balls would bump into each other – you can’t have two masses at the same point at the same time. So light must have no mass (weird), but it has energy…
Tonight he followed that up with “What’s gravity?” I resisted the temptation to give a huge long explanation, but instead demonstrated the rubber sheet model with the T-shirt he’d just taken off, with his hand being a gas giant (his choice of big thing) and then told him there was a video Katy could show him tomorrow. Hah – no delay tonight!
Surely the answer to a bedtime child’s “what’s gravity?” question is to pick them up, carry them to their bed and drop them in. 🙂
The only problem is that it’s a weak force and the little so-and-sos can just get up again…
Wow though 🙂
My kids usually only ask for more bubbles in the bath – may be I should take a leaf out of your book and pose a question at bath time (although if it prolongs the time til bed, may be not!)
Like the way you explained energy though – the torch thing is a great idea.