Funny Business

'Kids'-Eye View'

One of the jobs of former Sojourners intern Carol Leslie was keeping her eye on the press. She's still doing it in Boston. She sent in the following "kids'-eye view" of science from The Boston Globe for this month's "H'rumphs." The compiler of these gems is Ben Stewart, a retired elementary-school science teacher, who found each of these answers in the essays, tests, and discussions he conducted over the years with fifth- and sixth-graders.

"Humidity is the experience of looking for air and finding water."

"Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there."

"Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother."

"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 many things people forget to put the top on."

"The main value of tornadoes is yet to be discovered."

"To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up."

"When the fuel in a rocket starts burning, gases rush out the nozzle. So would anybody."

"I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how and that is the important thing."

"When a wave rolls over on itself it is called a breaker. Of just about anything, I guess."

"Thunder is a rich source of loudness."

"Question: In what ways are we dependent on the sun? Answer: We can always depend on the sun for sunburns and tidal waves."

"The wind is like the air, only pushier."

"Hard mud is called shale. Soft mud is called gooey."

"You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind."

"When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting."

"Rainbows are just to look at, not to really understand."

"South America has cold summers and hot winters, but somehow they still manage."

"Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime."

"Isotherms and isobars are even more important than their names sound."

"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 while others preferred to be oil."

"Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you should."

"Although Edison was once considered a great inventor, we now know of many inventions he overlooked."

"Talc is found in rocks and on babies."

"Our Mother Earth has small poles and a large equator because of the tremendous speed as she hurdles through space. Since we are along for the ride, we also get to be flat at our poles and rounded at our equators."

"Molecules are constantly bumping against each other in the air. There is really quite an overpopulation of molecules."

"A planet cannot have an axis until it can get a lion to run through it."

"Everybody leans to the sun in summer and away in winter. We are all a little tipsy that way."

"We get our temperature three different ways. Either fairinheit, cellcius or centipede."

"Question: In a free fall, how long would it take to reach the ground from a height of 1,000 feet? Answer: I have never performed this experiment."

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.