I hope this lightens your day as it has mine. Thanks to my nephew Page: The beguiling ideas about science quoted here were gleaned from essays, exams, and class room discussions. Most were from fifth- and sixth-graders. They illustrate Mark Twain's contention that the "most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop." One horsepower is the amount of energy it takes to drag a horse 500 feet in one second. When they broke open molecules, they found they were only stuffed with atoms. But when they broke open atoms, they found them stuffed with explosions. When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting. While the earth seems to be knowingly keeping its distance from the sun, it is really only centrificating. Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime. A vibration is a motion that cannot make up its mind which way it wants to go. Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils, others preferred to be oil. Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there. Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers. We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on. I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how to do it, and that is the important thing. In making rain water, it takes everything from H to O. Rain is saved up in cloud banks. Cyanide is so poisonous that one drop of it on a dog's tongue will kill the strongest man. Thunder is a rich source of loudness. Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound. It is so hot in some parts of the world that the people there have to live other places. Caspar Davis Victoria, B.C., Canada A wall of infinite dimension stands before the course of human evolution. It is the finitude of the earth and its resources. --Steve Morningthunder
